


Oubliette

by AliceBee



Category: Les Misérables (TV 2018)
Genre: BDSM, Captive, Chains, Dom/sub, M/M, Madeleine Era, Master/Slave, Montreuil-sur-Mer, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Rape/Non-con Elements, Restraints, Self-Harm, Solitary Confinement, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:15:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 24
Words: 33,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21572077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliceBee/pseuds/AliceBee
Summary: How did Javert get such an obedient Valjean?A prequel to "Promises to Keep"
Relationships: Javert/Jean Valjean
Comments: 89
Kudos: 104





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Promises to Keep](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20015797) by [AliceBee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliceBee/pseuds/AliceBee). 



He knew that Robert was concerned. He could feel the man’s eyes upon him as he signed over, piece by piece, everything he owned. His lawyer, a man whose countenance was one of sharp indifference, was standing by his side. They had convened at his factory after the day’s work had concluded and his workers had left for the day. His lawyer took the sheet of paper from him, blotted it and set it inside his file.

The next paper and the next were signed, moving funds and setting up monthly payments for his various charities. These were also signed over to Robert for his oversight and administration. He would now sit as the chairman of a small group who would oversee his affairs.

When the last paper was signed, his lawyer closed the file, gave him a nod of acknowledgement and left them.

Robert was still looking at him. He had tried to meet and hold his friend’s eyes, but he had been unable.

“I wish you would tell me what is going on,” said Robert.

Madeleine’s heart ached as he felt Robert’s gaze resting like a weight upon him. “I have burdened you enough,” he said by way of reply.

Robert sighed deeply, forcing out a full breath of air. Madeleine knew he had tested his friend’s patience and he wanted to try to allay his fears.

“I have said, it is a matter that I am not able to discuss. I’m sorry, Robert. It is family matter that I cannot go into. It should break a promise if I did so. Please, you have done so much for me. Do this one last thing?”

“What might that be?” Robert asked wearily, his usual good humour nowhere to be seen.

“Believe me when I say I shall be fine.”

The lie fell from his mouth, a cursed thing, and after all this time, he found he was able to say it with a smile. It was something he had learned could reassure and remove suspicion; it could allow him to retreat when pressed or distressed without leaving offence. A smile could buy you things a thousand francs could not. He had, after all, done nothing but lie to this good man and the whole town since he had arrived, why should another have stuck in his throat?

Robert placed a firm hand on Madeleine’s shoulder as he stood.

“I am troubled,” he said. “And I cannot but be worried, given what you have entrusted to me with so little explanation.”

“That was not my intention,” Madeleine said quietly.

“I know. If this is truly for the best as you have assured me… Well,” said Robert, seeming to make a decision, “I shall take you at your word, as I have done many times and not been sorry.”

“You are a good man,” said Madeleine, his voice rough with emotion.

“And you are a fine one. I hope I shall see you again and sometime soon.”

The words Madeleine wished to speak were choked off in his throat. He could only nod, his eyes threatening to spill all the sorrow and loss and terror that he felt in a river down his cheeks. Blinking back the hot sting of tears, he shook his friend’s hand. They stood like that for a long moment and he felt Robert’s reluctance to let go. It mirrored his own. Madeleine nodded again, his friend gave his hand one last squeeze and then he was gone, his footsteps receding as he made his way through the empty factory.

Madeleine sat alone for a time, long enough for the low autumn sun to slip below the roof tops and long enough for the air to cool and settle and ripple chills across his skin. 

There was nothing more to be done. The day after tomorrow, he would present himself to Javert and his life would no longer be his own.

***

Numb from the events in Abbeville, Madeleine, with Javert’s hand on his back, pushed open the door with his coat-covered, still-shackled hands.

It was an old, stone built cottage, bringing to mind a dolls’ house in its small size and aspect. Moss on the shingles and ivy over its walls, it looked like nature was in the process of taking it over. He had known of the house before Javert’s instruction. It had once sat outside the town limits, being part of the old estate before it had been broken up and sold following the revolution. Now officially part of Montreuil, Madeleine recalled that several years ago, he had signed the paperwork which had brought it within his jurisdiction. Still, it was somewhat removed from the rest of the town. It was a mile or so from the nearest neighbour, with woodland and tangles of hedgerows all round. No doubt that was why Javert had chosen it.

When Javert closed the door behind them, the world beyond fell away. Madeleine made himself breathe, trying to keep calm. It felt as though there were a gloved hand closed around his throat.

Javert pulled away the coat which had hidden the handcuffs and draped it carefully over a tattered old armchair.

“Sit,” he said, indicating a wooden chair set next to a rough-cut table.

Madeleine did so, noting the inkwell and quill that rested there.

Javert placed a bundle of papers in front of him. They were banking documents, authorising transfers of Madeleine’s monthly stipend from one account to another, and then on again and again. Madeleine signed each in turn, not caring why.

“Now,” Javert said, setting down a blank sheet of writing paper. “Copy this, word for word.”

Madeleine had a prepared note pushed into his hand. As he read it through, his heart sank. He was to copy out a letter to Robert, reassuring him of his safety and his good health. He was to date the letter some four weeks hence. Javert then produced several more letters for him to copy. Each was merely a facsimile of the first, light on detail, heavy on reassurance, to be dated weeks to months to over a year in the future. Madeleine closed his eyes at the impossible completeness of Javert’s scheme and then, with a heart full of dread, he began to copy out the first of the letters as instructed.

When he had completed the last of them, Javert pulled him to his feet and pushed him into the back room. A scullery of a sort, there was a small door propped open on the far wall. Shoved towards it, Madeleine could begin to see the stone steps that lead downwards.

His footsteps echoed coldly as he made his way into the dark, narrow stairwell. A light flared behind him and he heard Javert begin his own decent.

At the bottom of the stairs, Madeleine found himself not in a cellar as he had expected, but in a long, stone lined tunnel. Only as tall as he was and only just wide enough for one man, the light from the lantern spilled around his body, casting his shadow far before him, a dark, looming figure, darkness reaching out into darkness.

It was perhaps a full twenty minutes before the tunnel ended in an arched wooden door.

“Open it, go three steps inside then get on your knees.”

Madeleine reached out, pushed against the door and it swung open on silent hinges. His body almost filled the doorway and he could see little of what was ahead. He ducked his head and stepped inside.

When Javert entered with the light, Madeleine could see it was a small storage room, square, with a low ceiling. Madeleine had to hunch his shoulders but Javert had no such difficulty and he stood with his shoulders back and his head high. Pistol in one hand, lantern in the other, he hung the light from a hook and slowly the shadows settled. Piles of old furniture, piles of stone, piles of old clothes were heaped high against the far wall amongst old crates and wooden boxes. Dust and cobwebs hung in the damp air.

There was an iron ring bolted to the floor and an open padlock laid next to it.

“Kneel,” said Javert, pointing the pistol at the metal loop.

Madeleine did as he was told.

“Lock your cuffs to the iron ring.”

He did so, chaining himself at Javert’s feet.

Javert tucked his pistol into his waistband and grabbed a fistful of Madeleine’s hair.

“This,” he said, dragging Madeleine’s head back, “is an affront. Men of standing, men of honour, men of decency, wear this style. It sickens me to see it on the likes of you.”

Javert shoved his head down, releasing him. Javert took up a large hunting knife and Madeleine knew what humiliation was to come. Javert grabbed a hold of the ponytail that had sat neatly at the nape of his neck for these last years. Madeleine closed his eyes as Javert began to saw through the bundle of hair. The blade was sharp but it was not suited to the task.

When it finally came away, Javert threw it on the ground in front of Madeleine. It was still tied with its little black ribbon and it lay on the stone, a curl, a question mark, a discarded lie. Long strands of hair, now freed, fell into Madeleine’s face, but Javert was quick to collect them in his fist and begin to saw through them. He kept the blade close to Madeleine’s scalp, whose head rocked with each sawing motion. A second handful of hair joined the first on the floor and Madeleine stared at them, stared through them, as another fistful was grabbed and hacked away with the knife.

Six, seven, eight times, his hair was grabbed and coarsely cut off. A pile of hair like a scatter of dark straw littered the floor. Madeleine bent his neck as Javert spread his palm over the back of his head and pushed. He was smearing something cold and slick, like oil on his head. Using the edge of the knife like a razor, Javert then drew the blade over the curve of his skull, removing the short, scruffy clumps of hair that remained. Where the blade caught on old nicks and scars, blood welled in fresh cuts. Madeleine winced at each, but he knew better than to pull away. When the blade became clogged with hair and oil and blood, Javert would wipe the residue on Madeleine’s sleeve and then resume.

Eventually, he heard Javert take a step back and huff in satisfaction. Madeleine’s scalp felt as cold as stone and it was covered with a dozen scattered cuts that stung sharply in the chill of the room.

“Now you look like what you are. A convict in a gentleman’s coat.”

Madeleine felt Javert grasp the tail of his coat and then the pressure of the knife. As it was pressed into the seam that ran up the back, it tore and spilt, with Javert further rending it with his hands. When he reached the collar, Javert began to saw through the thicker material until it came away. He next sliced along Madeleine’s shoulders, down his arms, cutting and ripping and tearing away the material until Madeleine was in his waistcoat and shirtsleeves. He knelt beneath this assault as Javert, now quite careful, cut through each of the laces that held the back of his waistcoat closed. Madeleine felt each give way until Javert was once again hacking away at the material, slicing up his back and across his shoulders until the garment could be discarded.

Shaven-headed and shackled to the floor, Madeleine knelt, stripped to his shirtsleeves, suppressing a shiver as the cool of the room began to bite.

He may have taken a step back, but Javert's eyes were all over Madeleine. Keeping his own gaze resolutely to the floor, Madeleine waited, his heart skipping and stumbling in his chest.

Javert now had his back to Madeleine and was opening a box that had been resting on a tumbledown table. When he turned back, he was holding a huge glass in his hand and he was filling it nearly to the brim with wine. The dark red liquid glugged into the glass and it quite possibly now held almost half a bottle. Javert pressed the glass to Madeleine’s lips and the moment he opened them, Javert was tipping the large glass upwards, forcing Madeleine to gulp down the whole amount in four choking mouthfuls. Wine spilled down his chin and ran down his chest, the final dregs of which made Madeleine cough even harder. There was some kind of gritty residue in the bottom of the glass and he started to gag as it hit the back of his throat. He could feel roughness of it on his tongue, he could taste the bitter tang of it and he could see, as Javert took the glass away, a whitish powder smeared on its inner surface.

He felt panic flair, but it quickly retreated, along with his other thoughts, as he began to feel the effects of the powder. A strange hum started up in the centre of his head. It could not wholly be down to large amount of wine he had been forced to drink. Very soon, it was as if his mind was rolling down a hill and he couldn’t tell earth from sky or sky from earth and then all was a blur, a strange slow-fast blur and then… then there was nothing.


	2. Chapter 2

Javert nudged Valjean’s hip with his boot. The slumped figure on the floor did not move. Still wary, Javert put his foot on Valjean’s body and pushed at him. No response. A small kick and still Valjean did not move or flinch.

Javert watched for a time. He watched him draw in each deep breath, slow and rhythmic, observing those long, silent seconds between each one. This was as he had expected. Javert had not simply guessed as to the dosage.

He had, in recent weeks, taken to overseeing the late shift at their small cell block. His men were happy to be let off early and as they had learned, they did not question his orders. Vagrants and itinerants were usually moved swiftly on, but now they got to spend a night in the Montreuil cells before they were ‘encouraged’ to leave. Javert kept a note book, where he recorded each man’s age and build, with an estimate of their weight and general health. He would then give them food which was accompanied by the adulterated wine. They were, without exception, grateful and greedy to accept the unexpected meal. The wine was drugged with varying dosages and Javert noted each man’s response, how deeply he was affected and how many hours it took to wear off.

Given Valjean’s strength and health in comparison to the vagrant population, Javert had extrapolated the amount he would need to incapacitate him.

Now he was finally satisfied Valjean was deeply unconscious, Javert began to move some of the rubbish that had been piled up in the far corner. As the detritus was shifted, an entrance was revealed. It was a tunnel like the other, but with a lower arch and narrower aspect.

Unlocking the handcuffs from the iron ring, Javert grabbed the chain between them and began to drag Valjean towards the entrance-way. To get his dead weight moving was a struggle for the smaller man and he was grunting with effort as he entered the passageway. With his back to the direction of travel, Javert shuffled two steps back and dragged Valjean, shuffled two steps back and dragged Valjean. He repeated this pattern until he was panting for every breath and beginning to sweat.

The passageway was not as long as the first by any means, but these few hundred yards were hard won. He was bent over, hauling a man’s unconscious form and he could feel it in every muscle. When the tunnel finally ended and Javert could straighten up, he groaned as his aching back and burning muscles protested his exertions.

Javert and his captive were now in a large rectangular cellar. Stone-built for storage, it was long since abandoned. It had once been used as an ice-house, back when the building above had been part of the old estate. Remodelled over the years, it had latterly been a folly of sorts, an isolated turret in the far corner of an aristocrat’s estate who had then lost more than just his lands in the revolution.

Parts of the estate had been broken up and sold off and a merchant had purchased the folly and the tiny gatehouse it was linked to. As the country and the man fell on hard times, it had been put up for sale. And so it remained, year after year as no one in those straightened times had wanted a derelict folly on the edge of nowhere surrounded by a tangle of trees and brambles. Apart from one man.

Javert had come across the gatehouse and the tunnels and the folly soon after his arrival in Montreuil. Something about it had called to him, its layout and isolation unique. It was something he should never have been able to afford but for one thing. He had some savings but he had also been left a legacy by his mentor in Toulon. The old man had managed to save a franc or two per week for the whole of his long working life, a habit he had begun when his son was born and that he had felt compelled to continue after the boy had died. Having no one else, he had left the amount to Javert. It was not a king’s ransom, but it was a tidy sum. When he had learned of the gift, utterly unexpected, Javert had felt humbled. It was not an emotion he was used to feeling and in his gruff acceptance he hoped he had been able mask his discomfort.

Javert had thought the money to be used in his own dotage, should he reach such an age, or as a sort of insurance, if he became injured in the course of his duties. But when he found the folly, he knew immediately he would use all the funds he had available to try to buy it.

Still, when he made his offer to the agent of sale, it was far below the already much-reduced price. That his frankly inadequate offer was quickly accepted left Javert surprisingly unsurprised. The sense that a piece of an unseen puzzle had clicked into place had been marked.

There was dim light spilling into the cellar from above. The trapdoor in the floor above them was open, casting a cool grey-blue light into the far end of the room. A ladder was propped against the opening, but there was little else in the room – a pile of stone, some tools, a couple of large buckets, some old furniture heaped in the corner.

Having recovered his breath, Javert removed Valjean’s handcuffs and stripped him until the man lay naked on the stone floor. Sprawled on his side and deeply unconscious, this beast among men was now entirely in his power. 

Javert let himself look over his prize, his tongue tasting his own lips as the sight before him began to kindle his desire. His gaze crawled over the muscular body, over the long, thick cock, over the curve of that perfect arse and Javert could feel the heat rising in him. He let it linger for a delicious moment before stamping down on it with a brutal coldness. He would not indulge this further. That time would come, but it was not now.

Javert had previously set to one side a ragged grey shirt and tattered calf-length trousers and he set about laboriously dressing Valjean in his new prison uniform. He next picked up a set of wide-banded iron manacles, fastened them around Valjean’s wrists and locked them into place. The police-issue handcuffs would be returned to the station in the morning.

Dragging him further into the windowless cellar which was now his cell, Javert closed a shackle around Valjean’s right ankle. It was attached to a long length of chain that was itself attached to a heavy iron ring. Mounted into the corner of the back wall, Valjean would be able to roam about half of the cell’s area before the chain would pull tight and prevent him accessing the far end of his prison.

Looking at Valjean, shaven-headed and in chains, Javert felt the same deep, penetrating triumph he had felt the day he had found Valjean’s sister. When had seen in an instant all of this. How it was meant to be and how it could be brought about. After all those years and all those months and all those days, chasing and hunting and cornering, finally he would have Valjean, and incarcerated in a cell he would not escape from.

Javert turned his attention back to the passageway and the buckets and the pile of stone that lay nearby. The buckets were full of lime mortar. He removed his coat, laying it carefully to one side and then he rolled up his sleeves. Javert collected one of the buckets and a trowel and began to mix the thick putty-like substance until it began to loosen. When it was smooth and easy to work, he picked up one of the stones, slathered its end and base in the mortar and set it into the passageway.

It was not a process he found agreeable, it was too messy and imprecise, the blocks of stone were uneven and misshapen, but slowly, Javert was able to close up the arch, sealing up the room with a double-layer of stone.

Tired and dirty and somewhat dissatisfied with the appearance of his ‘wall’, these were minor irritations. Hands and face smudged with mortar, Javert looked over his shoulder to where Valjean lay and he felt that surge of triumph once again.

The decade of pursuit and that damn nagging, _incessant_ certainty which had driven him to professional and personal extremes. All of those hours and days and months devoted to this one end — Valjean’s capture by any means — had been utterly vindicated the moment he'd laid eyes on the Mayor of Montreuil and _known_.

This was as near perfection as he could have hoped for. Back in rags and back in chains, Valjean was now wholly within his control.


	3. Chapter 3

Valjean’s eyes were open, but it would have made no difference if they were closed; he could see nothing. He had awoken from his induced slumber groggy, nauseated and enclosed in a chill darkness that was blacker than the darkest moonless night.

He had woken from one nightmare into another. His dream had been a familiar one, of fear and pursuit and of capture. Panic and dread followed him from there into the waking horror of his new existence. 

He sat up, his head slowly swirling as he did so. He could feel the chains around his wrists were different – wide, metal manacles that moved little, so tight were they fastened onto him. He blinked against the consuming darkness and stretched out his hands. There was nothing. Ignoring the lingering effects of the sleeping draught, he felt along the floor in front of him. Rough, cold stone scuffed his palms as he searched for something, anything, which would give him purchase on the emptiness. At an arms length, there was nothing around him, so on hands and knees he felt further, trying to find the extent of his dark prison.

It was disorienting in the extreme, hands outstretched in the blackness, to find nothing.

Panic was rising that he might, somehow, be lost in an unseen, unending expanse. As he crawled, he could feel a heavy shackle around his right ankle and he heard the dragging of a chain. He grasped at that chain as though it were a lifeline. The other end was, of course, fixed to either the wall or the floor. Valjean eagerly followed it.

He was able to trace it back to an iron ring that was fixed and bolted to the wall. Pressing one hand and his forehead to the wall, he felt a profound relief that he was no longer adrift in the pitch darkness.

Arms outstretched, but keeping his left hand in contact with the wall, Valjean stood, and slowly, carefully, took a measured step into the darkness. His bare feet ached with the cold, the stone leeching heat from his body. He took another step and another and then the fingers of his right hand brushed stone ahead of him. He had found one corner of his cell.

With his eyes wide open and unseeing, he turned around, keeping the corner of the wall to his right. Again, he took measured, slow steps, feeling for the kiss of cold stone on his fingers. The chain that fastened his ankle was beginning to pull tight, but in seven steps he had found the opposite corner. There was a sound here, faint and low down. Valjean got onto his hands and knees and lowered his head. It was water. It was the sound of running water. He could hear the distant rush of what sounded like a small stream far below. He ran his hands over the floor and his fingers found a circular gap. He guessed a drain or sluice of sorts had been set into the stone. Valjean closed his eyes against the darkness.

The wall he was chained to, he thought of as the back wall, as his baseline. Facing away from it, he was able to take three steps before the shackle on his ankle prevented further progress. Valjean stretched out his hands, as far into the blackness as he was able, but there was no wall in front of him close enough to touch. He turned his back to the side wall and, at the limit of his chain, he walked forward, careful not to trip on his tether. His path described an arc in the darkness and he reached the far wall in eight, curving steps. He had found the edge of his new reality.

Standing in the blackness, wrapped in its cold embrace, the darkness seemed to dance before him, drilling into his eyes and into his mind. He found the corner of his cell and sank down into it. He drew his knees up to his chest and laid his head upon them. His shackled hands, he wrapped around his shins, holding himself close, needing to feel something other than cold, unforgiving stone in this blizzard of darkness.

He had not known what Javert had planned for him, but he had thought of many possibilities. This was perhaps one of the bleakest. Chained in some unknown darkness, shivering in the cold and lost, perhaps forever, to the world.

He tried not to think of it. Of the world beyond these walls. Montreuil had been a fantasy, nothing more. It was one he had been blessed to live for as long as he had, but now it was something akin to a curse. To have known the comfort of a soft bed and a warm fire and to have had food enough that he never needed to go hungry; these things would taunt him now. 

They were things he had never taken for granted, not for a moment. He gave thanks several times every day, often in wonder, always with humility. He had done all he could to spread the benefit of his success, but none of that would comfort him here. The cold stone and the darkness were indifferent, pulling and gnawing and draining his will.

His mind would not settle; it kept endlessly turning to the life he had left behind, aching for it, grieving for it, even though it had been mere hours since he had turned his back on the little town. He had walked that mile or two and he had never looked back. To look back would have broken his heart, cracked his resolve and quite possibly sent him bolting back to the people who had taken in a criminal and elevated him to mayor. They had taken in a desperate man and shown him how to live. Hot tears stung his eyes and a sob was wrenched from deep in his chest. The loss he felt overwhelmed him and he wept, tears burning his face. The pain and guilt he had lived with for so long roared forward, tearing at his heart. His lies and his deceit and his indefensible sins boiled up within him, and he was suddenly hot with shame.

His body burned like a torch, flaming in the darkness, lighting nothing but his path to hell.


	4. Chapter 4

The sermon was both an annoyance and an amusement. It had quite clearly been inspired by Madeleine’s abrupt disappearance. The priest seemed near distraught. It was most unseemly, for a man of the cloth to be rambling about charity and sacrifice and loving one’s neighbour when he had no idea that this paragon of virtue he was praising was nothing more than a filthy convict.

Javert sat there, listening to perhaps every fifth word, his mind wandering to his secret pleasure, held deliciously from the congregation. The town did not know and it would never know how utterly it had been deceived. Javert felt oddly towards them, something he could only describe as protective contempt. His oath of office was not something he took lightly and yet it was for these… _people_ that he had sworn it. He thought it must be how the sheepdog feels about the sheep – devoted and enthusiastic in its duties, but constantly having to snap at the heels of its dull-witted charges. Saving them from themselves, in many cases, as well as chasing the wolf from their pasture. Ignorant to the threat, here they were, lamenting a wolf that had walked among them. A wolf in sheep’s clothing which had prowled the streets of Montreuil until Javert had cleanly and expertly split it from the flock and neutralised its threat. It was now shorn of its disguise and locked away. The town was safe and it could continue on in its oblivious way.

As the service ended and the church began to empty, a man began to make his way towards Javert. If Madeleine could be said to have a friend, this man was it and so Javert was on his guard immediately.

“Inspector,” Robert said, “may I take a moment of your time?”

“Certainly.”

They moved to one side as the throng dispersed around them.

“Père Madeleine leaving so abruptly has me beset with worries that will not subside.”

Javert nodded curtly but said nothing.

“The circumstances of his leaving are most odd,” Robert continued.

“As I understand it, his lawyer prepared all the necessary papers. Are there any concerns there?”

“No, not at all.”

“Then I am at a loss, sir.”

“Is there nothing that can be done…”

“A man is free to do as he wishes with his own property.”

“This is correct of course—“

“Then I see no reason for police involvement in a man’s private dealings.”

“But it is so unsettling to have him leave so abruptly, with little to no explanation.”

Javert inhaled deeply through his nose and it was not quite a sneer that curled upon his lip, but it was close.

“As I understand it, his arrival in Montreuil was similarly… abrupt.”

He saw that this had touched a chord with Robert. How soon people forget. A few good deeds, some money spread around and his past was obscured, a mask was drawn down and a convict was taken into the heart of their town.

“Then perhaps,” Javert continued, “this is merely his pattern… to appear and then disappear. Who knows for why?”

Robert looked deeply troubled and Javert was almost out of patience.

“If there is nothing else?” Javert prompted.

Still looking stricken, Robert shook his head. “I am sorry to have taken so much of your time.”

“Good day to you,” said Javert, nodding his head.

“To you too, Inspector.”

Robert walked away and Javert watched him go. He would keep a close eye on the businessman. It would not do to have a man of his means and influence asking too many questions.

Javert headed towards the police station, though that was not his destination. He skirted past the frontage and took the side alley into the maze of tenements and thoroughfares that spread back from the main streets of Montreuil. He headed out past the town walls, setting a brisk pace on a fine, crisp day and for all the world he looked like he was taking a Sunday morning constitutional.

The teeming streets soon fell away, lines of laundry were replaced by hedgerows, the tenements by trees. Less than an hour from the town, Javert turned down the tangled driveway that lead to the little gatehouse. The brambles had sprung back, so he stamped them flat, cursing the snags they were putting into his uniform. Something would need to be done about that. Pushing past the little house, Javert made his way through the thicket that led to the folly. He had stamped a path previously, but again, it took little for the thorns and woody tendrils to swarm back into place.

His heart quickened as he saw that first glimpse of the folly’s turret, peaking through a gap in the treetops. Javert paused at the well and drew up a bucket of water and then transferred it to a smaller pail. Setting it down by the door, Javert fetched out the key. It was long and rusted, but Javert had cleaned and oiled both it and the lock, so now the mechanism turned smoothly. Javert pushed open the door and entered the round, stone-built tower. A solid wooden floor met his footsteps and a flat, short echo bounced off the walls. An old sail cloth, heavy and thick, lay over the trapdoor and this dark tarpaulin did a fine job for Javert.

He had set a desk, chair and a small stove into the room. A ladder was propped up near the door. There were two sacks, a large one of oats, a smaller one of dried beans, and they were leaning near the desk. Javert opened up the sacks and dropped a couple of handfuls of each into a wooden bowl and added some water. He mixed them together into a cold gruel and then set the bowl next to the small pail of water.

Javert dragged the sailcloth off to one side. The trapdoor was a double width opening with an ironwork grate set in one side. The lattice of metal bands was reminiscent of the hatches on a galley, but on a much smaller scale.

Javert knelt and undid the padlock. He drew back the bolts and opened up of half of the trapdoor. He set the ladder into the hole and secured it against the edge of the void. He would first take down the pail of water. As he took each rung, excitement grew and as his head dropped below floor level, Javert could see Valjean in the shadows, cowering from the dim grey light. He was drawn up into the corner, his shackled hands held up over his eyes, his shaved head turned away. Javert felt his lust rush up from the pit of his stomach, his skin flickering with sudden heat.

He reached the bottom of the ladder, took several paces towards Valjean and set the pail down. Javert watched him as he began to lower his hands, squinting and blinking at the light that had invaded his prison.

He was watching Javert, wary and still now his hands were lowered. Javert said nothing, he just drank in the vision of misery before him, shaven-headed, bare-footed, dressed in rags and secured with chains. Savouring his abject despair, the pain in his eyes clear even in the low, grey light, Javert took a few more moments, then began to ascend the ladder.

“No!” Valjean cried out, his voice a roar in the darkness.

Javert looked at him and smiled thinly, then continued up and out. He had merely gone to fetch Valjean’s food, but he was not to know that. Javert took great pleasure in lingering before he made his return.

When he once again stood before Valjean, this time with a bowl of food in his hand, his prisoner had the strangest cast in his eye. Anger and fear and desperation were all at war there. Watching him struggle to keep his temper in check was fuelling that ache in Javert’s groin.

Seeing the food, Valjean had moved from his corner and out into the cell on his knees, which Javert thought excellent. He held out the bowl but said nothing. He could clearly see the fight Valjean was having with himself, seeing his uncertain, fearful progress out of his corner and into the room.

Valjean then stood and took a hesitant step towards Javert. His chain dragged on the flagstone floor as he took another step closer. Not good. Javert took those two steps back, taking himself completely outside of Valjean’s reach. He now held the bowl into his body.

“What are you doing?” Valjean said, his eyes glittering with anger and frustration.

Again, Javert remained silent. He would work it out eventually and have food, or not and go hungry. 

Valjean stared at him and then stepped back. Javert took a step forward but nothing more, his eyes locked with Valjean’s desperate gaze. He would give him no clues. Javert could play this game all day, it was delightful to watch him suffer so.

Valjean took another step back, then another and then he looked about him, as if the answer would spring forth from the stones. Javert could not hide a smile.

When Valjean got to his knees, eyes blazing, Javert cocked his head and took two steps forward. He did not, however, hold out the bowl this time, so, positioned as the two of them were, it remained out of Valjean’s reach.

After several moments of silence and stillness, Valjean lifted his head in anguish and was staring up at the floor above him. Tendons stood out on his neck, his collarbones and broad shoulders on show through the tattered fabric of his shirt. His hands were curled into fist, his wrists straining at the iron shackles.

“Is this not enough?!” he cried, yanking at his chains. “Is _this_ not enough?”

Then Valjean sank forward, his head held in his hands.

 _There,_ thought Javert, _that is close enough_.

He lent down and placed the bowl on the floor. The dull sound it made had Valjean looking up. Javert retreated and watched as Valjean scrambled forward and took up the bowl. There was no spoon; he would have to scoop the gruel into his mouth with his hands.

 _What a sight,_ Javert thought. If only the town elders could see their Mayor now, groveling on his knees in rags and chains, eating from a bowl on the floor, licking food off his fingers.

When the food was finished, Valjean would be able to use the bowl to take water from the pail and drink.

Javert was satisfied with the day’s progress and he turned to leave.

“No!” said Valjean, desperately scrambling forward. “Not so soon. Javert, please, not so soon.”

Javert regarded him silently, then made his way swiftly up the ladder. He pulled it from the void and slammed the trapdoor shut. He heard Valjean's muted cries from below. 

“Javert! Javert, please!”

He slid the blots and fastened the padlock, then dragged the tarpaulin over the hatchway, plunging his prisoner into total darkness once more.


	5. Chapter 5

With no idea if it was night or day, Valjean slept when he was able, woke when he was rested and paced and paced and paced. It helped, a little, to keep the chill off his skin if he kept moving. And so he paced, cold feet on cold stone, back and forth, back and forth, counting his steps in the pitch dark. One, two. Three, four. Five, six. Seven, eight steps, then he would touch the wall and turn. One, two. Three, four. Five, six. Seven, eight. Touch the wall, turn. Over and over and over and over, the chain dragging at his ankle as he dragged it along the floor, muttering the numbers to himself, a mantra to keep his thoughts at bay and a chant to keep a quick pace.

He did begin to tire, after how long, he wasn’t sure, but it had certainly been hours. Valjean sank into his corner, his bucket of water and his bowl carefully stowed there to keep them safe in the darkness. He felt for the lip of the pail and for his bowl and dipped it for a drink. The water sank down his throat like a river of ice. Valjean shuddered and wiped a drop of water from his lips. His hand moved over his face and the scratch of perhaps three days’ growth of beard scuffed his fingertips. He closed his eyes against the darkness and drew his knees up to his chest. Cold water was no use in keeping gnawing hunger at bay and that familiar, agonised ache fretted at the core of him. There had been that one single bowl of food and then nothing. Rocking to keep some small movement against the cold, Valjean knew that Javert must come back soon. Rocking and nodding and muttering, he knew had to come back soon.

A bright, beautiful tumble of song rang out in the darkness. The sound stopped him dead. A blackbird must be singing near his prison. He stilled himself to listen, the fluid beauty pouring into his heart, filling his soul and he thought with surge of joy that it might mean the dawn. He imagined the sun rising, red, then gold, then yellow, warming the world and ending the cold grip of night. But then Valjean remembered; blackbirds do not sing in autumn. A chill that was nothing to do with the cold of his cell shivered over his skin. The song continued, loud and clear and very close. Valjean pressed his back against the wall and pushed his fingers into his ears, the chain that held his wrists pulled tight. Yet still it sang, sweet and loud and pure.

“Quiet!” Valjean roared, his hands now clasped behind his head, his arms clamped down over his ears, trying to shut out a sound he now knew was not real.

The bird sang on, filling the endless dark with music so piercing and so beautiful, Valjean’s heart ached for it to end. Curled against the wall, arms wrapped around his head, Valjean found himself shouting in the darkness, begging for it to stop.

A bang from above jolted Valjean from a stupor and the birdsong ceased immediately. He lifted his head to the brisk, clipped footsteps and the heavy, dragging sound above him. Tiny shafts of light spilled down from the edges of the trapdoor, slicing through the darkness, showering dust that spiralled like smoke. And then the door yanked open and the world erupted in light.

Valjean shrank from it, his eyes screwed tight against the ferocity of the brightness. Having yearned for an end to the darkness, the light struck like knives. Slowly he sat up, blinking until he could bare to hold his eyes open to some small degree. 

Valjean stayed on his knees, near to his corner, able now to watch as Javert descended, bringing food and water. Valjean could not deny that in amongst his anxiety and his fear, the most profound relief had spilled through him when he saw his captor climb down the ladder. Once again, Javert had a small pail of water which he placed on the ground. Squinting in the shocking brightness, Valjean could see little of Javert’s expression before the man made back up the ladder to fetch his bowl of food. So when Javert returned with another pail of water, confusion and concern bloomed in Valjean’s mind. Set down next to the first, Javert wasted no time in fetching a third bucket of water. A kind of dread was unwinding in Valjean’s stomach, accompanied by a flood of panic that sluiced into his blood. Javert had gone back up the ladder and when he began to descend, Valjean could see he had four bowls stacked in his hand, braced under his chin.

Valjean was shaking his head before Javert had reached the bottom of the ladder.

“No,” he said. “No, Javert, please.”

Javert was standing in the pool of light with the stack of bowls and Valjean could see a smile touch the edges of his mouth. 

When Javert stepped forward and laid down the first bowl, Valjean could see it contained the same gruel-like porridge as before, but as he set down the the second, third and forth, Valjean could see that the oats inside were dry. Javert stepped back, that same slight smile ghosting his lips.

Valjean swallowed, staring at the bowls, the implications as stark and chilling as the hunger that raged in his aching stomach. He crawled forward on his knees and took up the first bowl. Three days with no food meant the thick, cold gruel and the hard, dry beans were scooped up and bolted down in a scant few seconds. 

He watched Javert watching him as he sucked the oatmeal from his fingers. Shame at having to eat like this wormed its way through his veins. Shame was a lesson he had had to relearn on leaving the prison hulks. He had been blistered, inside and out, by years of toil and brutality and he had felt little but bitterness and rage. That was until his fateful encounters with a bishop and a young boy. Shame had then blossomed like a caustic rose, its thorns tearing and ripping endlessly at his soul. So yes, he felt humiliation now, but it was as to nothing when compared to the secret shame he kept hidden in his heart.

He tried to ignore Javert’s implacable gaze as it drilled into him, he tried to ignore the three bowls of dried food and what that meant for him. He tried to ignore the fact that he would soon be back in total darkness. What he tried to do was soak up as much of the light as he was able, he tried to keep his face turned towards it, to that blinding patch of white, high above him, up where the world existed.

Before Javert could close up the doors, Valjean gathered his bowls of food and pails of water, lining them up along the wall. Javert would not be back tomorrow, nor the day after, nor the day after that. Having eaten today, Valjean would have to ration himself, guessing at how many days had passed by the ache in his stomach and by the scratch of his beard. He tried to steel himself for what was to come as Javert pulled up the ladder and slammed the door closed. The crash of it echoed in the chill of the prison cell and it echoed in Valjean’s soul, a place with no light, no warmth and no hope.


	6. Chapter 6

The snivelling pickpocket in front of Javert was testing his patience. The man had been in the cells overnight and Javert’s interrogation was progressing slowly. He knew the man had an accomplice but the man’s blubbering was incessant and Javert was getting nowhere.

He hadn’t even managed to get the man’s real name confirmed. He’d given two different names to his arresting officers and yet a third to Javert himself. The thought occurred that perhaps there was something about Montreuil that attracted criminals with aliases and a thrill ran through Javert, despite his irritation.

“Weeping like a child won’t lessen your punishment,” Javert ground out, focusing with some little effort on the task at hand. “Co-operation might.”

“I never did it before,” the man bleated. “It was just this one time, I swear, I swear to you.”

“There have been more than twenty thefts in the last four days, all since you and your blond friend arrived in town. Try again.”

“I wanted to tell you, I was going to tell you, but he’d hurt me. He’d hurt me if I did.”

The man was wiping snot from his nose onto his sleeve, as if he were a toddler. It was pathetic. He was either more afraid of his accomplice than the police, or he was putting on a show. Either way, Javert’s gut told him it was a lost cause trying to get the man to talk. He locked the cell door and left the man to it, still sniffling, still craven. Having a criminal like this get the better of him was going to grate for some time; the man was behind bars but his nameless partner had most likely fled. Javert wrote up his report and requested notice be sent out to surrounding towns to be on the look out for the accomplice.

The rest of the day was fairly quiet, just a few drunks causing trouble at the tavern on the far side of town. If Javert was still irked by the pickpocket, he was also still thrilled by the thought of his secret possession. Once his mind turned to Valjean, Javert found it hard to turn away. It had been five days since he had left the food and he had been feeling an increasing desire to visit. It would be a salve to him to see a prisoner properly cowed and punished, whilst also being able to gauge how his experiment was progressing.

In his many years of service in the prison hulks, Javert had seen that the whip had little effect on the behaviour or the recidivism of the convicts. Its value as a punishment was clear and obvious; however any long-term modification on behaviour or temperament was almost entirely absent. It was this observation that had re-enforced Javert’s core certainty that convicts were an on-going danger once released. He had, however, also seen those rare occasions where a prisoner had emerged from the solitary cell profoundly altered and apparently permanently changed. And so this germ of an idea had formed, but he had never had the opportunity or the influence to test his hypothesis.

Until now.

Javert could hear him shouting as soon as he was inside the folly. Once he had opened the trapdoor and descended, Valjean’s shouting trailed off into a jumble of words which were lost to Javert. His prisoner cringed against the wall, away from Javert and, presumably, the violent assault the daylight had made upon him.

As Javert’s eyes got used to the gloom he took a few steps closer. He was gratified to see there was plenty of water left and one bowl of food was completely untouched. With no way to know how much time had passed or when Javert might be back, Valjean had been miserably eking out his meals. That uncertainty was exactly what Javert wanted to see: him permanently rattled and off-balance.

Valjean, now evidently more used to the light, uncurled from his corner and turned towards Javert, a desperate look in his dark, liquid eyes.

“When you come, it stops,” he said, shuffling forward on his knees. “Can you make it stop?”

A scruff of beard covered his face, his cheeks were sunken and the skin was pulling tight over his cheekbones. The rags he was dressed in and the chains that held him completed a picture of such exquisite despair that Javert was finding it hard to control himself. His desire was spiking, especially after such a frustrating day, and the temptation to take a whip to Valjean’s back was immense. Javert licked his lips, the prospect of beating Valjean delicious to him. But he knew that at this stage of the project, to detract from his plan would be potentially ruinous.

“It won’t stop,” Valjean rambled, “I… I can’t… please, can you make it stop? It’s the light or it’s you, please make it stop.”

He reached out with his shackled hands, towards Javert or the light or toward both, and shifting prisms of fear and hope and desperation played out over his beautifully anguished face. Javert regarded this supplication with barely concealed lust. He could feel his arousal stirring as Valjean crawled closer, entreating Javert to stop whatever it was that was distressing him so. Javert stepped back, out of reach of Valjean in his chains and then just watched him, in all of his confusion and pain, pleading for an intervention.

This was more than Javert had hoped for. Based on his observations whilst a prison guard, Valjean’s progress was far more rapid than he’d expected. Javert considered the differences in the two confinements. Though the cells in the bagne were windowless, they were not pitch dark. This afforded the prisoners a day and night; a way to mark time until the end of their internment. This was another difference which Javert thought important to note. Every prisoner in Toulon solitary knew that it would end. They could count their days, certain that each that passed brought them closer to release. The regular meal they would be brought gave further structure to their long, empty days. The bagne inmates could also hear the sounds of prison life going on as usual outside their cell. Furthermore, there was a tapping code amongst the prisoners and so they could communicate with their fellow detainees, though it was forbidden. When taken together, these various advantages added up to a large variation in experience. Valjean was immersed in total darkness and total solitude, with no hope of an end to his misery. That his decline was more rapid than Javert had seen in the bagne was therefore understandable.

Javert nodded to himself and then pointed, directing his gaze towards the empty bowls. Valjean’s mumbling ceased and he looked over his shoulder. It took a few moments for him to understand what was being asked of him. He scurried back to his corner and retrieved the empty bowls. He laid them out for Javert and then retreated from them as if from a lit fuse and a pile of gunpowder. Javert smiled at that deference and he was gratified to see that Valjean had learned that lesson quickly and well. Javert picked them up and went topside, refilled them and brought them back to Valjean, setting them down for him to collect. Only when Javert stepped back, did Valjean then gather them up, storing them in his corner like a miser hoarding gold.

As soon as Javert made for the ladder, Valjean scrambled forward, his chain jangling against the stone.

“Stay! Stay awhile longer,” Valjean begged. “Please, please don’t go.”

Javert had never, in all the years he had known him, seen such fear in Valjean’s eyes. He was _terrified_. Javert felt a surge of triumph and resolved to visit his prisoner more often. Now the initial cracks had begun to show, it was important that Javert control how they’d run.

He climbed up the ladder, followed by Valjean’s desperate pleas for him not to leave. Slamming and locking the trapdoor served only to mute those sounds. It made Javert shiver with desire to think of him down there, to _hear_ him down there, so desperate and afraid.

After dragging the tarpaulin into place, Javert went over to his desk and lit the candle. He lit the stove to ward off the chill of the approaching evening. He then sat down at his little desk, flicking out the tails of his coat so as not to crease them. Unlocking the drawer, he took out a quill, some ink and his journal and then re-read his last entry. Once reminded of his previous thoughts, Javert began to write up the latest observations from his experiment, all the while accompanied by the cries of a man on the brink of losing his mind.


	7. Chapter 7

Curled in the corner, rocking against the cold, something skittered over Valjean’s foot. A spider or a beetle, he had no way to know. He snatched himself away from the unseen thing on instinct, drawing himself into an even tighter ball. There had been things that crawled in Toulon. Rats, mice, a dozen different insects, infestations of lice and mites. This was the swarm of vile things that Valjean had been forced to share his space with; the lowest of creatures of which he had been but one. 

It had come back to him so quickly, the do-as-you’re-told don’t-resist mind-set of a convict. He’d had to develop that submissive manner to survive the attentions of the guards in the bagne. During his time there, he was seething with anger, embittered and furious, constantly having to bite back his urge to curse and confront. He succeeded mostly, given he had felt his rage exploding every day of his incarceration. He knew the whip was waiting for him as penalty for his failures, but he also knew it was there for as little as a glance or a word or for nothing at all, should the mood take one of the guards. As a punishment, it had quickly become meaningless, yet he would still have to show deference to those bastards even after they had beaten him bloody for no reason. It had not been easy, but it had been necessary. Cultivated over those long, hard years, Valjean had fallen back into that mentality the very moment Javert had sprung his trap. It was remarkable and upsetting how fast it had happened and how familiar it had felt; as at first, he had hardly noticed that he had done it.

There was a difference, however. Now he was minus the towering rage, whose place had long since been taken by shame and guilt and fear. He could still get angry, that was for certain, but the emotions that now ruled his heart roared through him like the flames of a furnace, burning away anything that dared to try and take hold there.

And inside his mind, how quickly Madeleine had fallen away! His authority and command had still been assumed by his workers and by the town, but suddenly, inside, he was gone. He was nothing more than a painted, paper mask, tattered and ruined by a righteous storm blown in from Toulon.

In truth, Javert had begun his work on him the second he had introduced himself to Madeleine. The shock of him striding towards his desk was burned into Valjean’s heart, utter disbelief shattering into a roaring terror and all the while he had been fighting that raging fear, desperate to keep his tone mild and his features neutral. In that moment the power in the town had shifted, both men knew. He was the Mayor in the eyes of the townsfolk only, a performance that would now have to be given under the relentless scrutiny of Inspector Javert. Pressure, pressure, pressure, at every turn, at every opportunity, his pursuer was there, poised, implacable, patient. There had been questions in front of polite company that verged on an interrogation. An uncomfortable evening of drinks and chit-chat had been transformed by Javert’s arrival into the most delicate and dangerous of times. He would arrive unannounced at his factory with his spies in tow for no real reason, other than to roust his quarry with more pointed questions and barely concealed contempt. Turning the screw to see when and if he would crack. 

In the end, Javert did not need to wait for Madeleine to reveal himself as a fraud. He had, of course, left nothing to chance in engineering his perfect plan and he had executed it with a ruthlessness that surprised even Valjean. It was brutal in its completeness, in its inescapability and within mere moments of being confronted with the warrant that bore his sister’s name, Valjean had emerged and Madeleine was gone. He then found himself submitting to his old prison guard as if years had not gone by and as if this whole other life had never happened.

Still, Valjean had no idea that Javert’s plans for him would be so cruel and harsh, that it would be quite as pitiless as this. He knew he would be incarcerated and punished, but this relentless darkness was beyond his imagination, beyond his reason. And he was so much more vulnerable here, no longer one among thousands, but singled out, alone and utterly dependent upon Javert. With no system to contain his… _enthusiasms_ , his jailer was free to torment him in anyway he could devise. Valjean would never have thought this profound solitude would be such a struggle. He had found himself shouting and begging for Javert to stay. He was desperate for the connection, desperate for the light, for both to remain with him as long as possible. The words had poured out of him like blood from a wound and he seemed helpless to stop the torrent.

Valjean was learning the cruel lesson that solitude was not the same as loneliness. He had been alone and had survived for more than two decades, firstly in the hell of Toulon, latterly in the haven of Montreuil. He had set himself apart in the town as he had in the prison hulks; it was a matter of self-protection in both places, though for very different reasons. Some in the town generously thought him shy, others, less kindly, called him aloof. He worked hard and that kept him busy and remote, but he had not realised how the people of the town had affected him until he was torn away from them. Those same kinds of feelings had chased him to Toulon, when he’d been taken away in chains and forced to leave his family to their fate. Faces and smiles merged and shifted, plaguing his memory in a tumble of feelings he was struggling to control. A hug from his niece, the dry, firm grip of a handshake, a smile, a kind word, the clap of a friendly hand on his shoulder, all things he had shied away from now claimed him as he clamoured for something other than the touch of cold, indifferent stone.

The relentless dark boring into him, Valjean closed his eyes and tried to sleep, turning away from the painful thoughts with all the determination he could muster. In fits and starts, he felt his mind begin to quiet and he had begun to drift when a sound in the darkness jolted him awake.

A child’s laughter, bubbling out of the silence, as clear as a bell. Full of delight and wrenching innocence, Valjean found himself recoiling in fear. More voices joined in, now three, now four children, all giggling and laughing. The sound echoed off the stone and filled the ice-cold air with joy. That such beautiful a sound could instil such terror; Valjean was screaming, screaming for them to be quiet, to shut up, begging them over and over to please, _please_ leave him alone.

Valjean knew their names. As each new voice joined the chorus of laughter, another name fell into place. Seven voices, seven children, seven names, seven endless peels of laughter taunting him from the eternal darkness of their graves.


	8. Chapter 8

A violent robbery the next town over had almost taken a man’s life and the three men responsible were rumoured to have moved on to Montreuil. Javert and his spy Marchand had been questioning the patrons of the various ale-houses, telling them of the gang that had been terrorising the surrounding towns and seeking any information they might have.

It was a foul night, with rain slanting across the street on a strong wind, as Javert and Marchand entered the last pub on their list. Shaking off the rain, they began to ask around. Had anyone heard anything? Had anyone seen anything? Was there anyone new in town? They were met with the usual shrugs and non-answers. A normal result for Javert and he was considering calling it a night, until a group in the corner caught his eye. Three men he didn’t recognise were hunched over their tankards, their heads down, making a show of not making a show. Javert nudged Marchand and they wandered over, as casually as they could, until they were stood over the three men.

Before Javert could open his mouth, there was a fist flying towards it. He saw it at the last second and was able to pull away. The blow still connected, but with far less force than it otherwise would have. Javert swung his own fist into the gut of the man and followed it with another, doubling him over for a moment. He saw Marchand struggling with the largest of the men, but then his own attacker sent a punch into Javert’s jaw that rocked his head back. He sprawled onto an ale-soaked table and then felt hands on the back of his coat. He was hauled back onto his feet and spun around, his assailant eager to carry on their tussle. Javert, his blood well and truly up, was only too happy to oblige. He feinted to punch with his left, but swung an upper-cut with his right that flattened the man and put him out cold. Cuffing him, Javert went to assist Marchand and between the two of them, they were able to subdue the larger man and cuff him to the bar.

The whole place had now erupted in violence and chairs, tables, ale and men were flying through the air. Javert saw, amongst the chaos, the third man trying to sneak away through the melee. Javert darted his way through the tangle of fighting bodies and he was able to creep up on the man and grab his collar. Almost at the door, the man reacted, twisting and flailing with his fists. Javert dodged and ducked, wrestling with the man, as buffeted by the scrapping patrons, he tried to get a securing hold.

The brawl spilled out into the street, a mass of men and amongst them, Javert - still with a hold on his assailant and his assailant still with a hold on him. They had dragged each other, thumping and fighting into the roadway. It was pelting with rain and howling a gale and within seconds Javert was drenched. Slipping on the cobbles after a fist landed in his stomach, Javert lost his footing. His quarry pounced, landing blow after blow before Javert could recover his balance. He crashed to the ground as a fist smacked into the side of his face. On his knees, Javert saw the boot flying towards his ribs, but could do nothing to avoid it. The pain was immediate and huge and it was followed by a volley of punches to his head that made the world fade. In the glow spilling from the ale-house, Javert watched a trickle of blood meander between the cobbles and then he passed out.

The sisters had tried to keep him in the infirmary, but Javert wasn’t going to let a few cuts and bruises get the better of him.

“You have cracked ribs and a cracked head,” the doctor had said. “You need to rest.”

“I need to question those robbers,” he’d replied, reaching for his clothes.

“Police are as bad as doctors,” the medic had muttered, closing up his bag.

Javert had got dressed with some great difficulty. His ribs were blazing with pain and his head pulsed with every sickening heartbeat. His uniform was filthy and still damp, but it would have to do. When every breath was pain and every footstep jarred him, Javert was in a foul mood when he finally arrived at the police station. What greeted him there only served to darken his mood further.

Marchand stood when he entered. His left eye was swollen almost shut and his hand was bandaged but otherwise he seemed unscathed.

“Sir,” said Marchand, inclining his head towards Javert’s desk.

Javert looked towards his table and bristled, pain and irritation spiking. Sat at his desk, exuding smugness, was Castange, one of the lieutenants from Arras.

Striding towards him, trying to keep the pain from showing, Javert spat, “What’s the meaning of this?”

The man did not stand as Javert approached, he only smiled and handed Javert a bundle of papers.

“This,” Castange said, flicking a speck of dust from his lapel, “is a set of orders from Gisquet. I am to act up, during your… incapacity.”

Javert opened up the orders and read them through, his teeth grinding, his ribs shrieking. Castange was a prick. His reputation amongst his men was dreadful. He was snide, petty and vindictive and Javert had it on sound authority that the man had taken credit for a complex arrest that was all the work of another, of a lower ranked man under his command. The man’s ambition wafted after him like a stench and nearly ten years Javert’s junior, here he was, snapping at his heels, all certainty and smirks.

“I see,” was all Javert could muster by way of a response.

“I’m glad you do,” said Acting Inspector Castange. “Unpleasantness and unprofessionalism, they have a way of making it back to the brass. My report clearly states that you are not fit for active duty which concurs with that of the doctor.”

The man had moved with a speed and ruthlessness that would have been commendable in other circumstances. As it was, Javert was on the rough end of his machinations and he did not like that one little bit. But with orders from Gisquet, there was nothing Javert could do but bite his tongue and comply.

He nodded to Castange and took his leave, hoping all he had worked for in Montreuil would not be undermined by this preening, cynical fop. He shared a pointed glance with Marchand, whose expression spoke with an eloquence which only expletives could have matched. Javert found he was in wholehearted agreement with the sentiment.

There was, however, a silver lining to all the pain and irritation of the last few days. With this enforced sabbatical, Javert could now, at least, devote some quality time to his side-project.


	9. Chapter 9

In his dream he was in Faverolles, the sun and a sheen of honest sweat on his back. Birds sang in the trees above him. As he climbed, they took flight on blurring, burring wings, up, up into a cloudless sky. He watched them through the branches until they were lost to him, vanished into the unending blue.

He set to work. The tools fit his hands and his hands were hardened to them. Hard, familiar work with good, familiar tools and a wage at the end of the day. The dead wood he was cutting was hard, hard like iron, hard like stone. For all of his efforts and with all of his strength, he had made little progress. Lifting his arm, straightening his back, he swung down with the axe, chopping into the branch with all the force he could muster. Again and again the blade fell, yet still the branch resisted. The sun beat down, no longer with pleasant spring warmth, but with blistering mid-summer heat. His sweat began to run, his shirt clung to his back and his body began to ache with a vile, bone-deep familiarity.

The birds returned, a thousand of them blackening the branches above his head, blanking out the sky. They sang their songs, sweet and true and loud whilst below him, the children gathered. Their narrow faces turned upwards, their wide, sunken eyes imploring him. Then their jarring laughter rose up, mingling with the birdsong, louder and louder and louder, until it grew so loud and so distorted it began to sound like screaming. The birds above him and the children below screamed and screamed and screamed.

Valjean did not jolt awake and he did not start from his slumber. Once it had cloaked his heart in fear and sorrow, the dream faded as they are wont to do. These feelings nested and they would follow him into his dark wakefulness, but for a time, for a short, blessed time, he was at rest. Only in the deepest, fathomless sleep was he spared, haunted as he was now, whether awake or dreaming. Their voices, their laughter, their screaming, the sounds of them followed him almost ceaselessly. Their shades were hidden from him in the darkness and they were knowable only by their cries and by the terror of guilt they kindled in his heart.

The horrific consequences of his actions were too, too huge. And so he had pushed them away, locked them away, in a secret chamber in the crypt of his heart. It was somewhere cold and dark and dreadful, and once he had managed to close that door, he had never imagined opening it, ever. He walled them off from his guilt and his sorrow, burying their faces, never thinking of their names except in the darkest of his dreams.

Javert confronting him with his sister, after all those years, had forced him to kneel at that dreaded door. He had begged and sobbed in the darkness, bitter, wrenching tears. Tears for the suffering and the sorrow he had caused, for the guilt that was gnawing at his bones, for the blame that he was due. Still, he could not bear to open that part of his heart, the horrors that lay behind that door would consume him, he was sure. His actions had condemned her children. He could not help but cry out to her in the dark, pleading for her forgiveness, certain he was crying out for absolution he was not due.

The sounds had swirled around him and he tried to shout them down, his voice at least a match for the loudest of them. But they could plague him endlessly and Valjean could not match that. If he paced for hours, muttering his numbers, that was a strange salve of sorts. They were not silenced exactly, but they could be held off. Of course, once he stopped and sank into the corner of his prison, they would clamour again in the silence, stealing his sanity one scrap at a time.

He had stopped now, exhausted from hours of pacing and as he shuffled into his corner, there was something different. It gave him pause that there was something else emerging from the jumble of sounds – not birds or laughter or screams, but a child singing.

A young boy’s voice danced out of the pitch dark. Alongside it, a hand-cranked tune from a jaunty, jangling music machine.

Valjean bellowed, “No!”

_“Cadet Rousselle a trois maisons, Cadet Rousselle a trois maisons._

_Qui n'ont ni poutres, ni chevrons, Qui n'ont ni poutres, ni chevrons.”_

The singing got louder, overwhelming the birds, overwhelming the screaming laughter. Round and round, over and over, louder and louder, janglejanglejangle.

Valjean groped for a bucket and hurled it into the darkness. He heard it crash into the wall and its contents splash over the floor.

“Shut up! Shut up!” he yelled, knowing it would not listen, but not able to keep silent.

_“C'est pour loger les hirondelles, Que direz-vous d'Cadet Rousselle?_

_Ah! Ah! Ah! Oui vraiment, Cadet Rousselle est bon enfant.”_

He roared again into the emptiness but the verse of the song circled around and began again, the boy’s reedy voice filling the cold, still air. 

_“Cadet Rousselle a trois maisons, Cadet Rousselle a trois maisons.”_

He grabbed another bucket, this one empty, and smashed it into the ground in front of him. He felt it explode, his strength may have been weakened but it was still immense. Scrabbling in the darkness, he felt for the shattered pieces of wood. His fingers, scuffing at stone, closed around a shard of splintered wood that was shaped like a dagger. He snatched it up, holding the wide end tight into his fist, the vicious point of it held outward, as if it could ward off the ghosts that were plaguing him.

_“Ah! Ah! Ah! Oui vraiment, Cadet Rousselle est bon enfant.”_

He held the ‘knife’ out in front of him, his shackled hands waving it uselessly in the pitch black, a desperate warning should anything dare approach.

Around and around the boy’s voice circled. It carried to Valjean from a dusty country road and from five whole summers' passed. A different lifetime ago. That boy was likely now a young man or near to it, and yet he would always be this age, he would always be this child, this innocent, even five thousand summers hence. Children wronged did not grow old.

Valjean turned his face to the wall and pressed himself into it, the cold stone unforgiving against his skin. He drew back his head. The dull smack of his skull against the stone sent a shock-wave through his head. He did it again, head-butting the wall with all the force he was able. A third blow and Valjean dizzied. Blood began to flow down his forehead, spilling either side of his nose, until it was dripping off his chin. It felt hot; it felt so hot against his freezing skin. And the pain! Now he felt the pain and it took precedent over everything, over the blackbirds and the sing-song and the screaming, backing them off, allowing some respite. Still holding his splinter of wood, Valjean sank into his corner, blood teeming unseen down his face, pain stabbing through his head and guilt constricting his heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the song that is plaguing Valjean:  
> http://www.toujourspret.com/techniques/expression/musique/C/cadet_rousselle.mp3


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tag added for self-harm

The doctor had given Javert a tincture to assist with sleeping. He had been loathe to use it, but he had been unable to settle with his ribs jabbing pain into him at every breath. A few drops in a little wine were all that had been required.

When Javert awoke, it felt late. The angles of the light from the shuttered windows were all wrong. They were spilling over the ceiling in a strange pattern, an illumination he had never before observed. Javert grunted at the sight. He felt dull and heavy, the only bright thing the pain in his side. Sitting up made him gasp and grab onto the small nightstand.

His thoughts were thick and slow, like poured treacle, as he painfully carried out his ablutions and got dressed. The cold water and his injuries did serve to rouse him somewhat and after a small breakfast he did not really want, he set off for the folly.

He had tried to ride the day before, but it was impossibly painful and so Javert set out on foot. This time he took an indirect route, heading in the opposite direction, only doubling back once he was outside the town walls.

The bright morning began to cloud over and the breeze had stiffened. As he made his way down the country lanes, Javert could feel it tugging at his greatcoat. Aching and sore, he walked on, the fresh air and the fresher wind finally clearing the last of those tinctured cobwebs from his mind.

He was nearly at the gatehouse when he noticed the sky had darkened considerably. The first drops of rain began to fall as he skirted the house and pushed on through the tangle of trees and brambles. It was darker still beneath the trees, whose leaves had turned to those autumnal hues of red and gold, but had not begun fall. Javert cast a glance upward as a gust of wind rattled through the branches, tearing a swirl of colour from them and hurling them into the air.

Grimacing at the weather and his aches and pains, Javert set all these things aside as he saw his first glimpse of the folly; the swaying trees revealing, then obscuring its tantalising form. It was a thrill to know he would soon be standing over Valjean and he imagined him as before, cowed and begging, or perhaps he would once again be shouting at the dark.

But on entering, all was quiet.

Javert pulled back the tarpaulin with some pain and difficulty. Holding his ribs, he was finally reduced to kicking it away from the trapdoor. Opening the hatch made Javert yelp. He doubled over as the world went grey before his eyes. When he had swum back to himself, he recovered his breath as best as he was able and then moved to shift the ladder into the void. It had always seemed a straightforward task, but with his nagging injuries, it took painful, awkward minutes to get it into position. When he had it secured, he had to take a moment, as a thin, cold sweat had spread over his skin, accompanied by an odd tingling in his fingers and toes. When that had passed, Javert felt able to descend and able to set aside all this discomfort and pain. He could now focus on his prisoner and the next phase of his experiment.

Javert took it slow and steady, despite his excitement. He was almost at the bottom of the ladder when, glancing below, he saw something that gave him pause.

One of the buckets was on its side near the foot of the ladder. Javert noted it, his irritation flaring. He should not have been surprised that Valjean had had this apparent fit of temper. His violent nature would not have been tamed by a few weeks’ of confinement; would that it were that easy. It was a reminder, not that Javert required it, that he was dealing with a convict possessed of an uncommon rage.

When Javert reached the floor of the cell, he bent carefully and righted the bucket. He set it at the base of the ladder, contemplating how best to punish this transgression.

Javert peered into the darkness. The dull, heavy weather outside meant even less light than usual was thrown down into the cell. He could not see as far as Valjean’s favoured corner because the grey light quickly faded into impenetrable blackness. There was no sound, except for the sound of Javert’s own breath and heartbeat. 

Then there was the harsh, sudden clatter of a chain drawn over stone and crawling towards him out of the gloom was something from a nightmare.

Valjean was a wild-eyed, blood-drenched horror, a creature dragging itself free from the very circles of hell. His face was a mask of red, his eyes were blazing with terror and a gaping cut split his forehead. 

Javert took an involuntary step back, the shock of his appearance cutting short all rational thought. Valjean was now at the limit of his chain and was holding out his shackled hands in supplication. He had not spoken, his face alone an only too eloquent witness to his state of mind.

Shock was giving way to anger as Javert observed him. The left arm of his shirt was also soaked with blood. He considered these wounds. These self-inflicted wounds. A bitter thought flickered at his lack of foresight, but was quickly subsumed by his building anger towards Valjean.

Still Javert did not dare approach. Valjean’s strength was remarkable and in the throes of this derangement, who knew what he was capable of? Javert found himself in an unusual state – he did not know what to do. The blood-soaked vision of hell kneeling in front of him demanded a response. Javert shook himself, tried to disengage from his shock, repulsion and anger, forcing himself to consider what should be done.

Those wounds would need to be tended, that was for certain, but then? His plans had been carefully weighed and this had most certainly not been a part of them. Javert would need to consider his next move, so he focused on the immediate issue at hand – Valjean’s injuries.

He would need to return topside and as he moved to climb the ladder, Valjean let out a howl of despair. It was a sound of utter desolation that, once faded, dissolved into sobbing.

When Javert returned to him, he was cowering into the floor. Javert had with him some water and a fresh bowl of food. Mixed into the gruel was a part-measure of the sleeping draught he had used on him before. There were several doses wrapped in folded paper, kept locked in his little desk a few feet above them. Javert put down the bowl and pushed it towards Valjean with the tip of his boot. That horrific mask of blood turned towards Javert and his gore-streaked hands made a grab for the food. Javert watched him eat, in fascination and disgust, as he waited for the drug to take effect. Based on his earlier calculations and given the drop in Valjean’s weight over the last weeks, he had given a three-quarter measure.

Javert began to observe Valjean’s agitation was lessening and then presently his eyes began to close for longer and longer periods, until he was unconscious. As before, Javert approached with caution, using the tip of his boot to nudge his captive. It produced a small groan, but nothing more. A second tap produced no response, so Javert took up his courage and knelt in front of Valjean.

The cut in his forehead was deep and long. If a doctor had been present, no doubt he would have recommended stitches. However, that was not an option open to Javert, so some alternative would have to do. He turned his attention to Valjean’s left arm. He tore the sleeve from cuff to elbow and then took hold of Valjean’s shackled wrist. He turned his arm towards the meagre light and grimaced at the sight that greeted him.

Javert could read the angle of a wound and know the crime that caused it. There were three deep, diagonal cuts gouged into the flesh of his left forearm. Clearly they had been inflicted by a weapon held in his right hand, working at the extent of its restraint. From the crook of his elbow, the wounds ran the length of his inner arm. Only the wide iron manacle had prevented the final cut from slicing into his wrist and the almost certain death that would have followed.

Javert was shaking with anger. Where had he got this weapon? He stood, ignoring the twist of pain in his ribs and made his way into Valjean’s corner. It was dark and nearly impossible to see, but then his boot clipped something. He bent down and picked up a piece of wood. Hanging from it was a short piece of rope. The handle of a bucket. Javert soon located other pieces of the shattered pail, until he came upon a long, slender piece that ended in a wicked point. When he brought it back into the dull, grey light, Javert could see it was stained with blood.

Turning his attention to Valjean, Javert resumed ripping open his shirt. He would use the material for bandages. Tearing the clothing off his shackled body filled Javert with a sense of power that was like the rush of a powerful memory. Stripped, he was still magnificent, his muscles sculpted and firm beneath Javert’s touch. The scars on his back were etched in cold relief and Javert’s hand lingered on his skin, his fingers moving over a massive raised welt. It ran from Valjean’s left shoulder and twisted down across his spine like rope. Javert followed the line of it, his breath quickening. That was a beating that would have laid open his back. Javert felt a flood of heat. Perhaps a flogging was due. Perhaps it was overdue. Then Javert caught himself, anger flaring that Valjean’s actions had him chasing back to the old methods. They had their place, but this was supposed to be something different, an exploration of some new possibility. Javert curled his lip and set his resolve.

Holding Valjean’s left hand, he drew a wetted rag over the wounds, cleaning off the smears of blood and wiping clear the grit and dirt that had clung to the cuts. Valjean moaned. Javert froze. Valjean’s eyes flickered open, he murmured something and then he stilled, closing his eyes.

Heart thundering, Javert continued. Holding Valjean’s elbow, he pushed the wounds closed as best as he was able and bound the strips of torn shirt around Valjean’s arm. Several layers later, Javert had made a tidy job of dressing those injuries. Next, Javert cupped Valjean’s jaw and commenced wiping the wet cloth over the cut on his head. He rinsed it out and then cleaned the blood from his face and throat, long, firm strokes that Javert then found he had trailed down over Valjean’s chest and abdomen.

His prisoner glistened in the half-light and a memory from the prison hulks rose unbidden from Javert’s mind. In the cool light of a quarter moon, he could see Valjean on deck, hanging by his wrists, sweat-drenched and naked in the suffocating heat of a Toulon summer night. Javert's cock stirred at the image and the intensity of feeling that it raised, but then he tamped it down. Again, his plans were laid out and each thing had its place and time. That particular thing was not now.

He turned back to his task. Once the blood was cleaned away, Javert bundled some cloth and covered the cut on Valjean’s forehead. He bound it in place with the last strips of shirt.

Javert stood, aching in his ribs, but finally he was able to feel some satisfaction; things were now under some form of control. His prisoner was bare-chested in his chains and so he would remain. Javert looked down at him, gratified, as an idea for his punishment began to form in his mind.


	11. Chapter 11

It was the wrong time of year to be pruning apple trees, but the owner of the orchard had wanted men amongst the trees whilst he tried to impress a buyer from The Low Countries.

Valjean and his fellow workers were to be seen to be busy, but to do very little. It sat strangely with Valjean, that for a week he would have a wage for doing almost nothing. But it was paid work in fine May weather with the blossom hanging sweet and low.

He moved between the rows of pink-white covered trees, his tools in a small hand-cart. Every once in a while, he saw a dead branch, stark and gnarled, as if something cruel and hard had been speared into the soft, white froth of blossom. The satisfaction of some real work beckoning, Valjean set about the latest branch, the dead heart-wood so hard and unyielding it took time and strength to get through it. A sweat was on his body and he was breathing hard as the dead branch crashed to the ground.

As he hefted the large piece of wood and dropped it into his cart, he heard voices. Valjean looked around. He saw the owner, the potential buyer and the buyer’s son had been watching him.

“Good, hard workers here,” the owner said, puffing up on Valjean’s efforts.

“I see they are,” the buyer nodded. He spoke his own language to his son, who wrote something down in a ledger, a tiny pot of ink attached to its spine with brass wires.

He was a little younger than Valjean, almost as tall and he was strikingly beautiful. Dark-skinned and wide-eyed, there were gentle, flowing curves and an exquisite balance to his features that held ones gaze far beyond politeness.

Valjean found that he was staring. He had only seen the boy from a fair distance until now. He had heard the other workers talking about him, about the colour of his skin and how that might have come to pass, given his father was a fair-haired Dutchman or the like. Was he an adoptee from the Dutch Colonies? Perhaps the child of an escaped slave? Was the father a plantation owner who had exercised his rights? The men could gossip themselves into a lather better than a roomful of old women and Valjean had paid them little heed.

But the boy was literally stunning. Valjean found himself as rooted to the spot as if he were one of the old apple trees. The boy smiled slightly, no doubt used to his unusual features causing such a reaction. Valjean, most _un_ used to being smiled at by such as him, gawped in return. The boy said something to his father and his unknown words were a delight that danced in Valjean’s ears and set his insides aflutter.

“You are very strong, Monsieur,” the boy said. His French was accented with delightfully lilting tones that almost sparkled. “You managed the branch alone.”

Valjean didn’t know what to say or what to do, so he scuffed his cap off his head and mumbled a thank you. The owner laughed and so did the father and the two of them walked off.

The boy remained.

He capped his little ink pot, closed his ledger and carefully held it level on his left arm. He held out his right hand, his long, dark, elegant fingers reaching for Valjean’s.

“My name is Christian,” he said, his hand still extended.

“Jean,” said Valjean and scrubbed his own sweating and work-dirtied hand on his shirt before timidly taking the boy’s.

Christian shook it firmly and his grip was warm and dry and strong. It felt right. And when he delicately ran his thumb over the back of Valjean’s hand, the shock of this touch, the fire that it kindled and the desire that it lit, that felt right too. They stood like that for a little while, before the boy was called away, holding hands beneath the blossom, looking into each others’ eyes.

Christian was there when Valjean cut himself. Two days after their introduction, Christian had arrived unexpectedly. Valjean had been distracted by the boy’s sudden closeness and was not watching what he was doing. The blade had slipped and sliced deeply into the flesh of Valjean’s left forearm. He had cried out in shock as blood started to spray. He sank to his knees, his hand clamped over the wound.

Panic and pain and a fear he had never felt before flooded his body. He was suddenly somewhere dark and stone cold. Before he could think, there were hands on him, strong and firm and warm and then… and then _he_ was there. Christian was there, tearing off his cravat and by his side in a moment, using it to tightly bind the wound closed.

Valjean’s shirt sleeve was soaked, but the makeshift bandage worked and soon the bleeding had stopped.

“Thank you,” he said, finally finding his words. “Thank you.”

“Are you badly cut?” Christian had been holding Valjean’s arm but now he was cradling his face, his blood-wet hands gentle and concerned. His touch was so warm; it was so warm and so wanted. Valjean closed his eyes for a moment and sank into his caress.

“No,” he said, “it is not bad.”

“Have you ever been kissed before?” Christian asked. The question and his sudden intensity made Valjean shiver to his core, despite the high sun above them. 

This was what they had been moving towards, from almost the first second they had met. Valjean, nerves churning inside him, tried to take something from Christian’s calm, steady gaze. He shook his head, not able to speak.

Christian moved towards him and the softest brush of his lips touched Valjean’s. He closed his eyes, not believing this was happening. Valjean’s heart was away, gone, lost to this beautiful boy. He didn’t know what to do.

“I could not bear to see you hurt,” Christian murmured, stroking Valjean’s hair.

He lent down for another kiss and this was not just a brush of lips. There was movement and pressure and pleasure and Valjean felt an urge, an overwhelming urge, to kiss back. And so he did, pain and fear forgotten. Bathed in dappled sunlight beneath the apple blossom, he kissed Christian and Christian kissed him.


	12. Chapter 12

Javert regarded his unconscious prisoner with a thin, wry smile. He had noticed Valjean’s erection when it had nudged into his knee as he tended those infuriating wounds. Clear evidence, not that any was needed, that Valjean was indeed a creature of the bagne, filthy and base, and that _Monsieur Madeleine_ had been nothing more than a cheap veneer pasted onto the face of a beast.

As he watched, the peak in Valjean’s groin began to fade. If Valjean thought there was any pleasure to be had here, he was very much mistaken. But first things first. Valjean would need to be taught that his body was not his. It was not his to pleasure, it was certainly not his to harm. He belonged to Javert and it would seem that fact had not yet sunk into his thick, convict’s skull.

Javert had stocked up with various items and he went to fetch a good quantity of rope from the pile of clutter that filled the end of the room.

Having satisfied himself Valjean was now deeply unconscious, Javert knelt in front of him and laid down the rope. Javert took a small key from the pocket of his waistcoat. He unlocked one of Valjean’s wrists and with some painful effort, he pushed him onto his front. As Javert re-shackled his prisoner's hands behind his back, he allowed himself a few moments to admire what was before him. Valjean’s body was stripped to the waist. The scars on his back, from scores and scores of beatings, showed up as shadow-like welts in the low, slanting light from above. As Javert ran his fingers over them, a strange nostalgia for those hot, humid days in Toulon filled his mind.

But however fond the memories, that was the past. This was to be something new and Javert was determined that he would maintain that principle. The rope was to be tied around the chain that held Valjean’s wrists. The central link was slightly larger than the others and the rope passed easily through before Javert tied it off. He left himself two vastly unequal ends: one perhaps a foot long, the other many yards.

Javert then brought Valjean’s ankles together and bent his knees. He took up that longer length of rope and pulled it hard, making sure there was no slack in the line from the manacles. He then began to bind Valjean’s ankles to the handcuffs as closely as he was able. As he did so, his ribs were protesting with dull, thudding pain, but he would have a break once the first part of the punishment was complete and Valjean was firmly hogtied.

Sore but a little recovered after a short pause, Javert looked to the beams above his head. He had screwed various eye-bolts and hooks into them, allowing for all manner of attachments and variations. An eye-bolt hung from the rafter above Valjean. A smaller version of the iron ring that secured his ankle-chain to the wall, it would facilitate all manner of options and it was ideal for Javert’s purposes.

Having checked the chair from the junk pile was sound, Javert placed it next to Valjean and he stepped onto it. He was holding the long tether of rope and, wincing as he reached above his head, he passed the end of the rope through the iron ring. He fed the whole length through, until metres and metres of it were piled on the floor next to Valjean.

Javert stepped down and pulled on that loose, coiled end. In effect, he was using the eye-bolt as a pulley and he was able to raise Valjean’s tightly bound wrists and ankles above his body. His arms and legs, bent backwards and secured, were raised up and up, until his body was contorted into an unnatural pyramid, his hands and feet at its apex, his torso forming its base. Javert was in too much pain to lift him clear of the floor and in honesty, even uninjured, he did not probably have the strength. Nonetheless, he pulled as hard as he was able before tying off the line at the manacles, ensuring all the while that the rope maintained that ruthless tension.

 _Let him self-harm now,_ thought Javert, the pain in his side worth it for the sight that lay before him.

Valjean’s body was under the most intense and impossible pressure. His arms, corded with sinew, were helplessly rotated back in their sockets. Bound as he was, the swell of his muscles bunched and crowded over his shoulder blades, warping that tangle of scars. The tendons in his calves stood out as if there were steel wires trapped under his skin. Every muscle was under strain. His body sang with it.

Javert was satisfied with his work and yet, something nagged at him. There was still a considerable length of rope left over and he did not like to see this go to waste. After considering a few options, he settled on an idea that seemed perfection.

Javert brought the length of rope over Valjean’s left shoulder and dropped it onto the floor. Then he knelt and lifted Valjean’s head. He pushed his fingers into Valjean’s lips and opened his mouth. It was soft and warm and moist and Javert suppressed a thrill at that sensation. For the moment, the only thing entering Valjean’s mouth would be this length of rope. Javert pulled the line tight and passed it between Valjean’s lips.

He found that by pushing Valjean’s head back further, he could shorten the line between wrists and gag. Javert passed the end of the rope over Valjean’s right shoulder, wrenched his head back as far as he was able and then tied the rope back down to the handcuffs. There would be no way for Valjean to expel the rope from his mouth; the tension was far too high. It bit viciously into the edges of his mouth, dragging his lips back over his teeth, forcing him to bare them in an agonised grimace.

There he would hang, wrists bound to ankles, ankles bound to beam, beam bound to wrists, wrists bound to gag, gag bound to wrists, in perfect, symmetrical stricture.

Javert’s body ached, but this was a good morning’s work. He returned top-side to update his notes and eat a small meal. It was the same gruel and beans as Valjean ate, but with the welcome addition of a scatter of salted meat scraps and it having been heated on the little stove. After rest and repast, Javert placed his notebook back in the desk and took out a small Bible.

If Valjean’s re-education was possible, it would need to incorporate the spiritual as well as the physical. He had particular passages marked with tabs of paper and he re-read them now, warming himself by the fire, while he waited for Valjean to wake.


	13. Chapter 13

Valjean tried to move. The pain in his arms and legs, in his back and in his neck cried out for some respite. There was none to be had. He was bound with rope as tight as a bow string and he could do nothing but suffer the pain it caused.

He had woken dazed and hazy, but all too soon the agony of his position had settled into his bones. Hour upon hour had taken their toll. If he relaxed his muscles for even a short time, the pressure on his shoulders and spine quickly became intolerable. Once again, he would have to take up the strain with his biceps and quads and core. Tensing them to take the stress off his screaming joints meant they would be screaming themselves in short order. His breathing was laboured, restricted as it was by the rope gagging his mouth, by the way his head was wrenched back, but also by the way his arms were bound so severely behind him. This suffering had many facets and Valjean had been enduring its scrutiny for unflinching hours.

There were punishments in the bagne of course, but none like this. There had been nothing quite as stringent or protracted. Back then, he had been roughly used and brutally restrained, beaten and flogged, but Valjean had found he was able to bear these things better than most. His strength had bought him some protection, but so had hate. It raged inside and it could fuel a man indefinitely. It was an all-powerful furnace in the heart of him and it was the reason he had survived nineteen years’ hard labour. For the best part of two decades, as an inmate of the prison hulks, it had been beaten into him over and over that his life was worth less than nothing. He became less than nothing, he was a void, he was a negative space filled with nothing but bitterness and fear and hate.

But even hate runs out, eventually. Valjean’s had long since been replaced by something else.

Shame burns differently, he had found. It hadn’t fuelled survival with defiance and anger and hate, instead it consumed him from the inside out. Every time he heard those voices, that laughter, that song, that music, the shame rose up, snarling and ravenous, to devour him, feasting on his grief and his remorse and on his guilt.

As his body was tortured by the ropes that secured him, his mind was mauled with thoughts and memories that were at once real and yet nightmarish. Things hid in the dark corners of his cell. Or they would skitter and crawl from the recesses of his mind, like spiders dripping venom, ready to feed.

His captor, after many hours, had finally returned and he had _spoken_ to him. It was the first time since Valjean's incarceration that Javert had spoken. It was a shock to hear him, to hear an adult voice and one that didn’t laugh or scream or sing or shriek.

Javert moved the chair closer and sat down, Valjean’s tormented body powerless at his feet. Javert then opened his Bible and began to read.

Caught between conflicting agonies, Valjean fixated on his voice. It sounded so rich and deep and resonant, so different from the sing-song shrillness that otherwise beset him. He tried to focus on the words, desperate for any connection, any distraction, from the pain in his body and the thoughts that plagued his mind.

“Romans, chapter 13, verses 1 to 5,” Javert began, “‘ _Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.’”_

Valjean closed his eyes. He tried to banish the searing pain in his body and let Javert’s voice seep into every corner of his mind. This was someone, this was something that was real. It could be held onto and used to ward off those vengeful ghosts, lurking, as ever, at the edges of his perception.

“‘ _Therefore_ ,’” Javert continued, “‘ _whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgement_.’” Javert’s voice grew in conviction and in volume. “‘ _If you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer_.’”

His words were a fire in Valjean’s mind. The pain was relentless but Javert’s words burned with their own kind of agony. The word of God was not going to provide him any solace, not here, not now, not for Jean Valjean.

Javert was peering down, a self-satisfied grimace on his face as he concluded, “‘ _Therefore, you must submit_.’”

Valjean shuddered, a spasm wracking through his body. He moaned, biting down on the rope that gagged him and he shifted in his bonds, desperate for some small measure of relief. He was caught in Javert’s web and he was as tangled and helpless as a butterfly. His struggles were as feeble as they were futile.

Javert pressed the sole of his boot onto Valjean’s shoulder and applied pressure. The ropes that held him creaked and bolts of white-hot agony twisted through his body. He cried out, immediately ceasing his fruitless struggles. After a long moment, Javert removed his foot and settled back in the chair.

“Do you know what God thinks of liars?”

Javert turned to each verse in order.

“Proverbs 12.22: ‘ _The Lord detests lying lips_.’ Proverbs 19.9: ‘ _Whoever pours out lies will perish_.’ Romans 3.13: ‘ _Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips_.’”

Javert paused, allowing his words to sank in, adding to the turmoil in Valjean’s mind. He was nothing but a liar and a thief. God knew it. Javert knew it. Valjean knew it.

Javert flicked to the end of the Bible, the pages like a blur of birds' wings. “Revelation 21:8 ‘ _But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, **and all liars** , their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur, which is the second death_.’”

Javert slammed the Bible shut.

“You could burn in Hell for your sins,” he growled. “You are to Him as a murderer.” Javert’s eyes shone in the half-light, a fervent glow spilling from them. “You ought to be thankful He has chosen to punish you for your wickedness in this life, rather than in the next. Be in no doubt, you deserve this correction you are suffering. ‘ _All who sin under the law will be judged by the law_.’”

Valjean couldn’t turn or lower his head. He could only avert his eyes from Javert’s penetrating stare. His body trembled in its bonds, his mind reeling from the truth of Javert’s words.

In brutal contrast to himself, Javert had spoken no lies, had told no untruths. He had quoted the word of God and held a mirror up to Valjean, showing him a vision of his own corruption he could no longer avoid. He knew these things about himself, but he had run from them. He had fled from them even as he had put down roots in Montreuil and made a life for himself. Every moment of every day had been a lie. Those good people, those decent people, had been deceived in the most craven manner, their trust bought by nothing more than the dividend of his wealth.

There was nothing left. Physically, he was exhausted. His body was in agony, trembling in its restraints. Mentally, he was in pieces. The shattered fragments of his past had cut him to shreds. And now spiritually, Javert had delivered a devastating blow.

God had never spoken to Valjean. Not before his Damascene moment outside Digne, not during and not after. All of his penance and all of his prayer had been met with only silence.

Perhaps… perhaps this was God’s answer. _This_ was God’s intended plan. For his sins, this place of suffering and misery was where he belonged. The fantasy of Montreuil was the glimmer of a life that had never been due to him. It had been built on lies and deceit, which was an abomination to God. How could he have believed that life of ease and plenty was ever his to live? Now he understood. It was so he would fully know the depths of suffering, that He had first made sure Valjean had known his Eden.

This punishment was God’s will and Javert was His instrument on Earth.


	14. Chapter 14

After completing his sermon, Javert untied Valjean’s gag. He held his head in both hands and looked into his eyes. Pain and distress swam there, but there was something else. Gratitude. Valjean was able to rest his head in Javert’s hands and find some measure of relief and he was _grateful_.

“You understand?” asked Javert, hardly daring to believe. “That you have been delivered into my hands?”

Valjean nodded weakly, his skull rocking within the cradle formed by Javert’s fingers. The weight of Valjean’s exhausted suffering rested heavy in his hands _and Javert felt powerful_. A thrill ran through him, sharp and hot and fierce. He had thought Valjean had surrendered before, but he had been wrong. That was nothing as compared to this. _This_ was a truer surrender, here and now. This was what Javert had craved from him. Before he had only held Valjean’s body captive. Now Javert had his spirit and it was as if he was holding that fragile, cherished thing in his very hands. Valjean’s will had been broken, cracked apart, in the crucible of Javert’s unrelenting ambition. Under such crushing pressure, even this most insolent and defiant of convicts had been reduced to a shuddering husk; a creature who was thankful to its jailer, regardless of the suffering inflicted.

“Your soul belongs to God,” Javert said, moving closer. “But your body and your mind He has entrusted to me."

He ran his thumb over Valjean's lips, exploring the corners of his mouth rubbed raw by the coarse fibres of the rope.

"You’re mine,” Javert whispered, leaning forward as his lips brushed Valjean’s ear. “Mine.”

His prisoner trembled, a low moan escaping from his throat. Javert tightened his grip, digging his fingers into Valjean’s scalp. At this urging, he felt Valjean yield and he nodded miserably. Javert had to suppress a shiver. It shimmered over his skin like satin or like silk. To not only see his surrender, but once again _feel_ it with his own hands was almost too much. Every nerve was alive to the intricacies of Valjean’s surrender. Every detail was to be inhaled like a rich perfume. He was a prize so rare, he was to be savoured in every way imaginable. Over the coming weeks, Javert was determined that his every sense would be indulged. But now there were decisions to be made.

He had thought to leave Valjean bound until morning, but his entrancing reaction to the discipline was such that he had given Javert pause. It was possible that extending his punishment into tomorrow could prove counterproductive. This was a precious and delicate moment and Javert was unwilling to gamble.

After some consideration, Javert lowered Valjean’s head to the flagstone floor and let him rest a little. His breathing eased with that respite. Taking some time to savour the severity of his restraint one last time, Javert began to untie the ropes. He slowly lowered his arms and legs and Valjean groaned in pain, his muscles and joints no doubt screaming with the sudden movement after so long held immobile. His limbs were cold to the touch and grey with lack of blood. Whilst he was still incapacitated, Javert re-positioned his hands, cuffing his wrists back in front of him. Valjean lay on the floor, unable to move, pain and misery deeply etched on his face. However, clearly visible in those wide, dark, articulate eyes, were other, enthralling emotions. Defeat, capitulation, surrender and acceptance, all eddied and swirled.

 _How grateful are you now, convict?_ Javert thought. _Now you’ve been freed?_

The thought of Valjean showing him just how thankful he really was caused Javert’s stomach to flutter. The pit of it pulled almost painfully tight, awakening that dark, carnal place deep in the root of him.

To distract himself from such untimely thoughts, Javert removed the rope from the floor around his prisoner and began to loop it into a neat bundle. But all the while he watched him, fascinated. His vanquished prey, who hadn’t moved and hadn’t made a sound, was riveting to Javert. 

Next, he took some time and care to remove all the fragments of the shattered pail Valjean had used to harm himself. Javert knew he had a seen a true breakthrough today, but he was not a complacent man.

He let Valjean lie there, though before he left him, he placed a bowl of food and a bowl of water next to him, close enough that he could reach them without too much effort. Javert then climbed the ladder and closed up the cell. His ribs ached from all of his exertions, but the pain was more than worth it for the gains that had been made.

He took some time to write up his results. Such progress had been made in so short a time, Javert felt pride swell inside his chest. Clearly, there was great merit in his strategy if one such as Valjean could be bent to its yoke. Once he had documented the day’s achievements, he was tidying away his notes, when his eyes alighted on the wrapper that had been pushed the back of the desk. The folded paper held the remaining quarter measure of the sleeping powder he’d used on Valjean.

Javert had planned to spend a few nights at the gatehouse. It was provisioned with enough firewood and food to last a few days. The one thing he had forgotten to bring with him was the tincture that his doctor had prescribed. Given the substantial ache the day had settled into his ribs, Javert tucked the paper wrapper into his waistcoat pocket, in lieu of his own medication.

The sun had set and it was cold enough for Javert’s breath to hang in the air. Stars glittered between the branches of the trees as he made his way back to the house.

Chilled and aching but invigorated by his accomplishments, Javert lit the fire and warmed his meal over it. He drew an old blanket around him and settled down in front of the hearth with his hot bowl of stew. He sprinkled in the powder and on taking his first mouthful, he could taste a little something of it, but it did not spoil his food. He knew it was not going to be enough to knock him out, but shortly, he felt something begin to sink into his bones. It poured into his body like warmed honey and it soothed his aching ribs. As that sweet slackness fell upon him, Javert had the thought that he should take himself off to bed, lest he fall asleep in front of the fire. But he was so lulled and comfortable and so deeply relaxed, Javert drifted off in the overstuffed chair.

The fire danced and crackled and flickered, bathing Javert in its cosy orange glow. He slept on and it was the deep, dreamless sleep of the righteous.


	15. Chapter 15

Valjean’s body ached. His muscles hadn’t burned like this since those long, brutal days spent breaking rocks in Toulon. Every movement sent miserable waves of pain through his body, but he welcomed it.

He needed this familiar, constant reminder of who he was and why he deserved this. He understood that now. It was what the voices in the darkness had been trying to tell him. They whispered still, around the edges of his perception. Javert and his unique attentions had managed to push them there, to the margins where they hovered, murmuring in the dark. And that was something else he was grateful for.

He lay on the cold stone, his body warmed from within by pain and shame but also by a heat that kindled lower. When Javert had held his head, his hands warm and strong, relief had swept through him and he had almost wept at this small kindness. Did Javert know what it had meant for Valjean to feel the touch of another? Had he somehow managed to see into his dream? That the relief he had brought, after so much suffering, had been something close to transformative?

During the hours he had been bound, the voices and the sounds had taunted him from the darkness, stoking his shame into a blazing fire. But once Javert had returned, they had been banished and when he cradled Valjean’s head, the bliss of that release was like nothing he had ever felt. Javert’s presence and his touch were able to ease his pain and chase those tormenting ghosts into silence.

No longer alone, no longer at the mercy of the cruel edge of his own mind, there was Javert. He was God’s agent and Valjean’s saviour. It was clear that it if his soul _was_ to be saved, he would need to submit himself wholly to Javert. 

Even now, alone and recovering in the pitch black of his cell, the pain in his body was all-consuming. Valjean gladly let the agony fill his mind. His muscles burned and every joint screamed when he moved, but it was all in preference to the flame that shame and guilt would otherwise torment him with. They would plague his mind with those singing, screaming children and that was unbearable. He had wronged them so profoundly that there could be no redemption, there was no hope, other than that his soul might yet be saved through the purification of Javert’s punishment.

***

The after effects of the sleeping draught meant Javert had risen late once again and it simply would not do. He was struck by how unpleasant his waking had been, in contrast to how wonderful he had felt falling asleep. He was groggy, nauseated and his body felt leaden. That there was pleasure in that powder was well known. What Javert hadn’t appreciated was quite how miserable one felt after it had worn off. He smiled to himself despite his discomfort, for this was yet another way he could manipulate and control Valjean, if it should become necessary. A reward for good behaviour that could be withheld should he displease him. He would send for more once he was back in town.

Javert had also been contemplating how to deal with Valjean’s urges. There was a plaited tieback holding the drapes that repeatedly drew his attention. It had likely once been a deep blue, but it had faded to a dusty grey. He decided to see what could be made of it. There was large, decorative tassel which Javert cut off and discarded. When he did so, the plaited strands began to unravel. Where the sun had never reached, a bold, royal blue stood out. Each strand was itself made up of three more, and it was these, thinner, more supple threads that Javert was interested in. They were possibly made of silk, and when the dust had been patted from them, there was still some pleasing sheen to the threads.

Javert wound a long single strand around the fingers of both hands and pulled. There was a puff of dust as it snapped taut. There was strength in the fibres and when he applied more pressure, they did not break or fray. A smile spread over his face. Thicker than cotton, thinner than braid, this would be ideal.

He ate a small breakfast now his stomach had settled and then he headed to the folly, three long strands of silk safely stowed in his pocket.

He stood before Valjean, who as previously, was cowering from the sudden explosion of light into his limited world. Javert waited for him emerge and take up what was becoming the accustomed position, on his knees a few feet from his corner.

With his shaven head bowed and his hands in chains, he looked every inch the penitent convict. It was a marvellous transformation, but Javert was wary. This would be the first time he would try to approach Valjean without drugging him first. He fetched the hank of rope and the old chair and stepped towards his prisoner. Javert was pleased to see that there was no change in Valjean’s demeanour, who remained looking at the floor and did not move.

“Lift your hands up,” Javert instructed.

Valjean did so, without hesitation lifting his shacked hands to meet Javert’s. He threaded the rope around the chain and tied it securely. He then bundled the rest of the rope into a ball and threw it over the beam above their heads, ignoring the stab of pain this caused in his side. Circling behind, Javert pulled on the rope, dragging Valjean up.

“On your feet,” said Javert.

As Valjean stood, Javert made sure to keep tension on the rope the whole time, pulling it tighter until his captive’s arms were held high above his head. His naked, whip-scarred torso was now under stress once again, a fabulous sight, and Javert admired the sight in front of him as he tied off the end of the rope. 

“I think you understand now why you’re here.”

Valjean nodded, his eyes still downcast. This obedience was also immensely gratifying and it awakened that deep gnawing need inside Javert.

“If you act against me,” Javert continued, “you act against God. Do you understand that?”

The prisoner nodded again.

“What happens here is His will and you will submit to my hand.”

“I will,” Valjean replied.

Though he was restrained by his wrists and his right foot, he could still kick out at Javert with his unshackled left, should he choose. Javert contemplated and then rejected chaining him further. This was to be a test of both Valjean’s progress and Javert’s new method. At some point he was going to have to trust his safety to his theory. He felt confident that he could try this today.

Still on his guard for any violent indication from Valjean, Javert set the chair in front of him and sat down. From the corner of his eye, he saw a flicker of concern cross Valjean’s face. He did not, however, move or try to pull away. Javert undid the button that held up Valjean’s tattered trousers and pulled them down to his ankles. He felt him flinch but otherwise he held steady. If his breathing had become a little more rapid, that was to be expected.

Javert was now at eye level with Valjean’s impressive cock, its impudent length taunting him even now. Javert took out his strands, three tied together at one end. This end he then tied around the base of Valjean’s shaft. His prisoner tensed, his breath hitched, but as Javert began his work in earnest, Valjean remained unmoving.

Under and over, under and over, Javert wove his strands of silk in an intricate braid down the shaft of Valjean’s thick, vulnerable cock. Tight, but not so tight that he could not pass water. It was however, tight enough that any arousal would be fetched up short and for an erection to be impossible.

Javert reached the head of his cock, having covered his length in a lattice-work of silk. He looped the threads together and tied them off, and then began to double back on his handiwork, creating a second layer to support the first.

When he reached the base of his shaft, Javert took those loose ends and tied them sweetly tight around the back of Valjean’s balls. Then Javert ran his thumb over the head of Valjean’s cock. It was bulging slightly and reddened by the constriction of the rest of his shaft. Javert heard him moan as he continued to torment him, rubbing his foreskin and then nudging it aside. Valjean started to seep over Javert’s fingers as he worked on the super-sensitive skin beneath.

“You need to learn to control your urges,” said Javert, relentlessly massaging the tip of Valjean’s cock whilst squeezing his balls for extra emphasis.

The cry of anguished pleasure that Valjean gave made Javert shudder with desire. Javert watched his body tense on its chains, his powerful muscles straining helplessly. He could feel Valjean’s cock twitching desperately in his hand, constrained by Javert’s elegant handiwork, unable to grow without immediate and immense pain. Valjean was maybe one quarter of the way to being hard. He was trying to hold himself back grimacing, groaning, fighting Javert’s hands, the braided thread that bound his cock and his own helpless urges.

The silken lattice had done its work well. Javert stood, more than pleased with the day’s work. He would leave Valjean to his misery whilst he ran some errands in town. Perhaps by the time he returned, a valuable lesson would have been learned.


	16. Chapter 16

Javert’s walk into town was buoyed by the events of the last couple of days. His ribs ached, but his spirits were up, a fiery sensation deep inside him that fizzed out over his skin. The early October air felt blissful against this heat, fresh and bright, the breeze pulling occasional clouds across an otherwise clear blue sky.

It was market day and usually Javert would have avoided the crowds, observing them from a distance, alert for any criminal intent or activity. He was not one for browsing stalls or shopping, but something today was different.

A bric-a-brac stall piled with nonsense and whimsy had for some reason caught Javert’s eye. There was something about the mass of random items, incongruously mismatched in no order at all. It would usually have driven Javert to distraction, to see such a tangled, untidy wreck of a stall. But two things had his attention. Firstly, sat in a bowl that also contained empty bobbins, walnut shells and small metal trinkets, was a sphere. Javert was compelled to pick it up. Something like a paperweight, it was perfectly round, with no flattened surface that it could rest on. It was small, smaller than the jack in boules, but when Javert picked it up, it was heavy.

“Solid crystal,” the stall owner said. “Very rare, especially with so few flaws.”

Javert held it up to the light and the sky seemed caught inside, flipped upside down, the orb shone blue and white and it was perfect.

“How much?” he heard himself ask.

“For you, M. Inspector, just five francs.”

It was an exorbitant amount, but Javert almost said yes immediately. He checked that urge and instead made an offer.

“I should say half that would be nearer the mark.”

“Half, sir? Four francs would be theft!”

Javert arched his eyebrow, he knew these vendors had their patter and their spiel, but to be accused of such a thing had piqued Javert’s anger, threatening to pop the strange bubble he had been operating in all morning.

“I have my eye on another item,” Javert said, moving past the irritation. “Perhaps we can come to an arrangement for the purchase of both?”

“Oh, well, you should have said. What is it that you have seen?”

It stood at the back of the stall, on a raised area. It was a quite dreadful sculpture of a knight on horseback. It was honestly one of the ugliest things Javert had ever seen and yet he was captivated by it. The knight was far too big for the horse, and it should have been holding a broadsword or a lance, but this was holding something that looked for all the world like a fencing epée. 

The more Javert looked at it, the more sure he was that it had been cobbled together from disparate parts. It really was awful. But one detail of this monstrous thing had hooked Javert – it was an idea he had been pondering for a little while, but he had been unsure of how exactly to proceed. Then this hideous thing had just dropped the solution almost completely formed into Javert’s lap. He felt a strange, almost maniacal urge to laugh. Javert understood this odd mood must be a remnant of the sleeping draught and he resisted the uncharacteristic hilarity and pushed on with the negotiation.

“The knight sculpture. If you include for it to be delivered to my lodgings, I will give six francs for the two items.”

“Six! For a masterpiece in bronze such as that?” The man harrumphed. “You’ll never find another like it. Unique it is. Ten for the both of them.”

“Seven.”

“Do me eight.”

“Seven including the delivery.”

The man tutted and huffed. Seven francs for the vile knight and the lovely crystal was a horrifying amount to be paying a market-stall holder. 

“Seven sir, and only because of my respect for the law and your good self.”

Javert paid the man and gave his address. “Make sure you have it delivered to me by sundown today.”

“Pleasure to have your custom,” the man said, his eyes shining, thinking that he’d got one over on the local constabulary.

Javert found he didn’t care. The smooth crystal globe was in his hand and the hideous knight would be delivered to him later that day.

He moved through the throngs of people and made his way to the post office. There was a bundle of letters and correspondence for him to collect and he took them back with him to his rooms. Javert poured himself a little wine and then sat with his letters, writing replies where they were necessary and pausing occasionally to admire the glowing crystal that he had set on the window sill in front of him.

He had kept one of the letters deliberately until last. It was a statement of account from the _Bank de Boudreaux_ in Paris. It was the final resting place of Valjean’s stipend, after splitting it and bouncing the various amounts around the country to avoid detection.

Javert broke the seal and unfolded the letter. Neat rows of beautifully written figures were listed and then totalled at the bottom. He could not believe what he was seeing. It had not yet been three weeks since Valjean’s incarceration, hardly any time at all. The amount at the foot of the statement simply defied comprehension.

One thousand, three hundred and sixty eight francs.

Javert stared at the numbers, certain there must be some error. This ridiculous amount of money could not be correct. He checked the addition but he found the same figure was produced time and again.

Two and a half years. It would take Javert around two and a half years to earn the same amount. Yet here was this convict, this liar, this _thief_ , making more money in a single month than Javert could hope to see in years.

Anger now most certainly punctured Javert’s earlier buoyant mood. Where was the justice? If not for Javert’s intervention, where was it to be found?

Well, Valjean _was_ getting a taste of what natural justice felt like. All the money in the world and where was he? Chained and bound in the dark, to be broken on the wheel of Javert’s unyielding will. And what delicious irony, to use this astonishing amount of money against him. Javert would now accelerate his plans.

Valjean’s re-education would continue apace.


	17. Chapter 17

Valjean had been able to calm his urges, once Javert’s hands had stopped tormenting him. The tight binding around his cock bolstered his own self-discipline and his stifled erection subsided.

His whole length throbbed with pain, a dull, aching thud that even now strained against the woven threads that held him. There would be no relief from that until Javert decided to show mercy.

Hanging by his wrists, naked and helpless in the dark, Valjean could hear them. They were far off, chased there by Javert, but not gone. Songs and shrieks and giggles, like the sound of a distant torture brought on a breath of wind. He shuddered, not only from the cold but from the thin, bright fear those voices caused. They were icy blades that slipped into his mind like a knife would slip between ribs.

He grabbed the rope that bound his hands and tightened his grip. He could not walk himself to exhaustion, he could not work himself to collapse as he had in the quarry, but there was this. Valjean lifted himself off the floor, flexing his biceps and core so that he was supporting his whole body. He relaxed down and then repeated. His immense strength was diminished and it was hard work, but there was also an underlying ease to it that felt good. It felt good to move his body after Javert had bound him so impossibly. It felt good to feel his strength and have that sense of himself return.

Over and over, Valjean rose off the cold stone and lifted himself into the air. He started to count, in eights that echoed those hours spent pacing, the numbers and the physical work pushing those voices further into the dark recesses of his mind.

Hours of this. Repetition after repetition, over and over until he ran with sweat. That and the chanted mantra of his count meant that his body and his mind had been soothed into exhaustion. Valjean hung from his chains, breathing heavily, resting, thinking of nothing. Then he heard the sounds of Javert’s return. Cold fear and aching need twisted through Valjean’s soul as he was violently returned to the light of the world above.

He jerked his head away and squeezed his eyes shut. 

As he heard Javert’s footsteps on the stone, Valjean opened his eyes, squinting into the light. His captor stopped in front of him and then Javert ran his hand down Valjean’s sweat-drenched chest. He tried to keep that blankness in his mind, but that hard, firm hand on his body had caused his thoughts and emotions to come roaring back.

“What have you been doing?” Javert said sharply.

Valjean showed Javert. He held onto his ropes and hauled himself up, his muscles straining now, after so much exertion. He was watching his jailer closely and he saw Javert’s expression change from suspicion to desire.

Javert nodded, no longer angry.

“I’ve brought you something,” said Javert. “Open your mouth.”

Valjean felt his fear spike but he did as he was told.

“Wider,” Javert ordered and so Valjean complied.

Javert then brought out his ‘gift’. The sphere in Javert’s hand caught the world above as if it were some kind of inverted wonder. It shone impossibly bright and Valjean was amazed by its simple beauty.

Then Javert pushed it into his mouth. Valjean gagged on it as Javert forced it home. The globe had looked small in Javert’s hand, but it felt huge in his mouth. It was heavy and cold and awkward and his jaw began to ache almost immediately. When Valjean tried to move his tongue, the solid glass clattered into his teeth and resonated through his skull. 

He found he could not swallow and saliva was beginning to drool from his lips. Valjean made a sound. It was helpless, muffled moan, a plea for this strange misery to be ended. Unable to speak, he tried to entreat Javert only with his eyes, but his attempt was greeted only by a cruel smile.

Javert ran his fingers over Valjean’s parted lips, over his exposed teeth and finally over the surface of the globe that curved out from his mouth.

“When I saw it I knew,” Javert said, his voice a low growl. “A pretty thing for a pretty mouth.”

Javert’s hands were then all over Valjean’s naked body, covering every inch of his skin, only capable of aggressive caress. Valjean was nearly overwhelmed by the sensations, warm and firm and harsh and grasping. After so long in the cold embrace of his cell, after so long alone in his life, he had never known anything quite like it.

Javert’s hand raked down his chest, clawing across the flat of his stomach and then down further to take him roughly. Valjean’s cry of pain was smothered by the glass in his mouth, a half-choked plea for this to stop.

And then he felt Javert himself move lower and his mouth closed over the tip of Valjean’s tormented cock. As Javert’s tongue tasted and teased, Valjean tried to twist away, desperate for this thudding, helpless pleasure to please, please end.

Gasping and moaning, Valjean closed his eyes, his hands locked high above his head. Javert’s mouth was on his cock, one hand was now massaging his balls and his other hand was pressed into the cleft of his buttocks, his fingers having forced their way into his body.

Valjean’s hips were rocking and he was powerless to stop what was happening. He was desperate to come though he was unable to even get half-way hard. It was agonising and astonishing, his mind and body smeared into this pleasure and this pain.

His shackled hands curled into fists as Javert continued to press his fingers into that deep, intimate place. Moaning around the heavy sphere of glass that gagged him, Valjean’s head rolled back, his cock straining at the bonds. Having found that space inside him, Javert’s fingers worked him mercilessly, rubbing and grinding and kneading until Valjean was mad with longing and writhing in Javert’s clutches.

Then suddenly, Javert was gone. Valjean’s cock, wet with his own limited leakage and with Javert’s saliva, strained uselessly, his balls thumping in desperation for release. Valjean exhaled and it was a reedy sound of complete torment.

There Javert left him, seething on the brink and utterly unable to do anything but struggle in his bonds and moan around his heavy, glass gag. 

Valjean didn’t know how long he’d hung in the morass of that ecstatic distress, but eventually Javert untied the rope that had hoisted his wrists above his head. He sank to the floor, wrecked by Javert, shuddering on the cold stone, his body crying out for a release that was impossible. When Javert eased the sphere of glass from his mouth that, at least, was some relief.

“The first few times will be the most difficult.”

Valjean just nodded in reply, desperation and aching need gnawing at him.

“I will be going away for a few days,” Javert said.

Valjean felt a stab of fear and genuine panic, like spears through his body.

“I will leave you enough food and water and I expect you to maintain your condition. Is that understood?”

Valjean looked up at Javert in despair. He had only just begun these daily visits. In such short a time, they were something Valjean had started to cling to. Javert was his literal light in the darkness and now he was going away.

“Is that understood?”

“Yes,” Valjean nodded, staring at Javert’s boots, just inches from his face.

“Good.”

And with that Javert left to fetch his food for the next number of days. In physical, sexual and emotional distress, Valjean turned away from the light and scrambled back to cower in his corner.


	18. Chapter 18

Paris always had this effect on Javert. It was, he supposed, the result of him being so close to that which he had coveted for so long. There was a thrill in the centre of him, one that echoed in his mind as well as his body. Now he was merely a visitor, but one day he would be able to call the greatest city on Earth his home. That, for Javert, was a certainty.

He had left his uniform behind in Montreuil. He was dressed in his best civilian clothes. Smart and little used, he had appeared every inch the well-turned-out gentleman in the looking-glass of his lodgings.

However, once he had made his way to the urbane streets of the financial district, his keen observational skills noted that the cut of his jacket and the knotted style of his cravat were not of the current Parisian fashion.

The thrum in his blood changed. Excitement shifted down into self-conscious regard as suddenly everyone’s eyes seemed to be upon him. Scorn-filled glances and half-hidden sneers danced in front of Javert as he made his way through the throngs of the well-to-do and the well-heeled. 

The _Bank de Boudreaux_ loomed ahead, and from a distance, its colonnade of Grecian-style columns made the place look as though the entrance was barred.

It was quite ridiculous, that he felt more anxious climbing the steps of the bank than he did when conducting a raid on a criminal hideout. Javert tried to shake the feeling, but it was a cold, persistent weight right at the heart of him.

He had his paperwork in order and after removing his hat, he took the documents from his inside pocket and stood, waiting to be called forward.

When the next available clerk did so, the man’s arched eyebrow and pinched lips spoke as to surprise and disdain as Javert approached. If only such unprofessionalism was a crime, Javert would have taken great pleasure in shoving the man against a wall and roughly cuffing him, before dragging him off to the police cells.

Instead, Javert sat awkwardly on the chair, settled his hat upon his lap and then laid out his documents for the clerk to inspect.

“I should like to make a substantial withdrawal, as I indicated in my letter dated 23rd September.”

“I see,” the man sniffed, poking at the papers as if he might contract some disease if he touched them fully. “One moment.”

The clerk took the papers with him and disappeared into one of the offices. Javert looked around him, feeling eyes dart towards him and then just a quickly skirt away. He observed the great and the good of Paris all around him and he felt _less_. He grabbed a hold of that thought as though it was a physical thing, as if it were a criminal that needed to be wrestled and restrained. He would _not_ have this now. 

Shortly, the clerk returned, with what Javert presumed was the man’s manager.

“M. Lavern,” the manager greeted him. “A pleasure to meet you.”

The man held out his hand and Javert shook it, acknowledging the pseudonym that he had chosen for this account.

“Likewise,” Javert said.

“I am always keen to meet our new clients. I find that a personal interest taken means that a long and profitable relationship can be forged. I see your several areas of business are doing well.”

“They are. I should like to make that withdrawal as documented. I have… an investment opportunity that requires a substantial cash sum.”

“Excellent news! Rousseau, please arrange for the amount to be gathered. Whilst that is being readied, would you join me in my office, M. Lavern? For coffee and some of my wife’s freshly baked madeleines?”

Javert’s head jolted at that name, but he was able, he felt sure, to smooth over his reaction. It would not do to raise this man’s suspicions.

“That would be agreeable.”

While the money and documentation were drawn together, ‘M. Lavern’ and his bank manager had a productive and informative meeting. This man in front of Javert seemed to care only for profit and he had seen that potential in this newly acquired account. Javert let the man speak, he seemed fond of his own voice, and it was a relief to not feel judged for his appearance or for his clothing. The coffee and delicate, shell-like cakes were a pleasant, unexpected addition and were excellent.

A knock at the door and Rousseau entered with a large leather wallet. Javert took it from him and coolly examined the contents. He kept his countenance even whilst holding more money than he had ever seen in his life. Inwardly dazzled, he returned the cash and the documents to the pouch and stood.

“Thank you for the coffee and give your wife my compliments.”

“M. Lavern, I hope this will be the first of many meetings. Good day, sir.”

“Good day.”

There was time before his second appointment of the day. Javert flagged down a carriage and asked to be taken to the garment district. 

He had to visit three establishments before he was able to find one that had something available to purchase there and then. He had neither the time nor the inclination to wait for a coat to be tailored and this small but glorious establishment had assured him they had items available in his size.

When he had first entered, the proprietor had looked him up and down, tutted several times and begun to fuss over him in a quite annoying manner. Though he had insisted to the man that he did not want a tailored garment, Javert nonetheless found himself in his shirtsleeves being measured up.

“I should very much like to make the gentlemen his own coat,” the man said, shifting Javert’s arm up to shoulder level and running his tape measure along its length.

“As I have said, I don’t have the time. You said you have items off-the-peg that would fit me?”

“Certainly, my eye has never failed me and I have several that would suit sir. But there is nothing like a coat that has been tailored to one's own body. I have a fabric that would be perfect for you. Once you see it, I hope it will change your mind.”

The man’s establishment was certainly a distracting experience for Javert. The finery around him called to Javert as an array of jewels might call to a countess. His eye had been caught, that was for certain, because he would never have been so easily persuaded to submit to this maddening attention otherwise. Javert supposed there was no harm in looking, as he did have several hours before he needed to be elsewhere.

When his measurements had been taken, the tailor brought out two bolts of the most beautiful material Javert had ever seen. One was dark teal, the other a rich, deep fuchsia. They both had a gorgeous sheen to them, a silk weave, the man was saying.

“If I may say, there are not many men in Paris would could take such bold a colour as these.”

Javert’s hand was on the fabric, his mind nearly blank.

“I am not often in Paris,” Javert heard himself say.

“That is no problem, sir. Included in the price I will have them delivered to your residence, wherever that maybe in all of France.”

Javert found that he was nodding and at that, the man brought out a third choice of fabric, a dark silver that shimmered in the light.

“May I recommend this for the waistcoats?” the tailor suggested.

The combination would look exquisite with either the teal or the fuchsia and Javert found that he was asking the price for both coats and a waistcoat from a place quite far from where he felt he was. 

If he had not seemed so strangely removed from himself, he might have choked as the cost was quoted. But the amount was only vast when compared to his own salary. When looked at beside the balance of M. Lavern’s account, it was a mere trifle.

Javert left the tailor’s establishment a little while later. An off-the-peg coat of the latest style was on his back, a new cravat which allowed for a more florid knot was tied at his throat, his old coat was neatly folded and wrapped in brown paper, and his copy of the order for two tailored jackets and a waistcoat were tucked next to his heart.

Now when people looked, Javert knew they would see a man who had made it all the way to Paris. A man who deserved to walk her streets with his head held high.

If Javert had felt intimidated going into the bank, that was as to nothing as he approached the _Institut de France._ One of the most learned and forward thinking establishments in all of Europe and he had an invitation from Professor Lesieur himself in his hand.

The porter had taken this letter of introduction and was leading Javert to the Professor’s rooms.

He was a doctor of natural philosophy and he had seemed intrigued by Javert’s correspondence. His letters were ebullient and welcoming and the man himself matched them. 

He bounded over to Javert, hand out, a huge smile on his face. Though the man was slim, everything else about him seemed spherical. A balding, rounded head on that slender body resembled a child’s lollipop, round eyes loomed large behind circular eye-glasses and his button nose crinkled when he smiled.

“My good man, Lavern!” he said, pumping Javert’s hand heartily.

“Pleasure to meet you,” said Javert, taken slightly aback.

“I can’t tell you how I’ve been looking forward to your visit. Off you go, Bresson,” he said, dismissing the porter, before resuming his effusive welcome. “When I received your letter, well, to say I was excited would be an uncommon lie – I was ecstatic.”

“Really, sir?” said Javert, somewhat overwhelmed.

“Your proposal is absolutely fascinating and not one that should ever have entered my head.”

“Being of a more… practical nature, I am interested in the application of your work, rather than the pure science of it.”

“And that, in and of itself is not rare. Many business-minded men approach the Institute but far fewer are willing to put their money where their mouth is – that is what was so refreshing about your letter. That the donation was offered with only the request for an invitation to meet, rather than as some veiled attempt to lure us into a contract. That was what had me leaping with joy. You have no idea, my good man, none, how timely your offer is.”

Javert opened up the leather pouch and removed the stack of bank notes. Professor Lesieur’s eyes grew even rounder.

“Cash money?” he exclaimed. “A banker’s draft should be more appropriate!”

“I do not want a trail that my rivals might follow here. I wish to keep our arrangement confidential. For commercial reasons.”

“Good Lord in Heaven, would you look at this!” He clapped Javert on the shoulder and beamed at him. “I should name a wing of my department after you!”

“Please do not,” Javert said, dryly.

“Come, come into my laboratory. Let me show you my wondrous toys!”

Some hours later, Javert left Professor Lesieur’s lab. His head was spinning. He could not say that he had understood much of what had been told to him, but the demonstrations had been proof enough. To see it, to _feel_ it, had been truly astonishing. A few short years ago, what Javert had just experienced would have been condemned as witchcraft.

He had thought that the equipment would be vast or hugely complicated but it was neither. He did not understand the mathematics or the chemistry, but he could understand the set-up. A local blacksmith could build the parts and with little effort. It was quite incredible.

What was even more astonishing was that the Professor had what he described as an ‘older unit’, which he no longer used. He was more than happy for Javert to take possession of it, so that he could conduct his own ‘commercial experimentation’. It had already been crated up for storage, so could easily be sent on.

He arrived back at his lodgings with several pamphlets from the Professor. Javert would make an attempt to understand more about the device. The rush of anticipation would aid his study as the more fully he grasped its workings, the more fully it could be utilised.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters will be posted today, 19 & 20.

For the first time, both sides of the trapdoor had been fully opened up. Valjean, still kneeling in his corner, peered up into the vast open space above his head. Fear mixed with relief as this flood of light bathed his bleak prison. There was also a strange excitement within him, an apprehensive anticipation.

Javert was back.

Valjean did not know how many days he had been gone but it had been many. He had known it would be longer than he had been left before, as Javert had not left him bowls of food, but had brought down to him the sack of oats and the bag of dried beans. Several large buckets of water had also been left with him. It had made Valjean’s heart ache. Knowing he was to be plunged back into that piercing darkness with those taunting, screaming, shriek-singing voices and no way to know when it would end. That had filled him with dread.

But now Javert had returned and brought with him more light than Valjean had seen since his incarceration all those… weeks ago? He had no idea how long he had been locked in these chains, in this dungeon. It could have been a month. It could easily have been longer. Counting down your days as a convict, like counting up your meagre wage, became second nature – a running tally that sat at the front of ones mind, chasing down the days till you were free.

To think on how long he had been here simply added to his distress. It didn’t matter if he had been here ten days or ten months or ten years… no matter how many days he had been imprisoned here, it did not change one fact. That Valjean knew he was here for the natural span of his days.

He pushed these thoughts away. Javert was back and something was happening.

Valjean could hear dragging sounds, heavy thumps and occasionally a gasp of effort from Javert. Presently, a crate began to be lowered into his cell. The ropes that secured it creaked as it made its way down onto the flagstone floor. Whatever was in the crate was clearly heavy, the strain on the rope obvious.

Valjean shuffled forward on his knees and peered up into the light. Javert was not visible, but he could see a framework had been set around the opening, allowing Javert to lower this heavy crate into his prison.

He caught a glimpse of Javert and he scurried back into his corner.

More things were lowered in, smaller boxes, bags and bundles of rods and poles. Valjean was baffled by this influx of items.

Finally, Javert himself descended into Valjean’s cell and his heart felt squeezed by fear and hope. He scrambled forward, on his knees, to his required position and looked at the floor. 

Valjean heard Javert’s footsteps approach and then saw his boots enter his field of vision. That he wanted to throw himself at his feet made Valjean feel sick. That he wanted to throw his arms around his legs and hold on so tight, so that he’d never leave him again made Valjean feel faint. He held himself still, his heart hammering as Javert stepped closer. 

His captor’s hand, leather-gloved, closed around his jaw and lifted his head. Valjean raised his eyes and met that gaze. Those dark, implacable eyes fired Valjean’s desire while they chilled his soul. As his blood began to run hot, the silk thread that was still tied tight around his cock gave him a not-so-subtle jolt.

“You missed me,” said Javert and it was not a question.

Valjean looked away, shame and heat and fear burning through him. He could still see Javert and he saw him smile. It was the snarl of a wolf scenting its prey.

“Go back in your corner. I need some space.”

Valjean obeyed, shuffling on his knees, the chain dragging across the floor, his cock throbbing against the twine.

Javert wasted little time in beginning to unpack. The crate was first and, pulled to a more central position, he began to dismantle the box rather than just remove what was inside. Valjean watched in bewildered fascination as the thing inside was revealed.

It was a large glass tank, the sort he had seen outside expensive Parisian restaurants. About a metre and half long and perhaps half a square metre at the ends, live lobsters might have been the usual occupants of such a thing. However, here there were a series of square metal plates, seemingly slotted into narrow channels so that a small gap remained between them. They ran down the length of the tank, perhaps twenty or thirty of them.

The tank itself had been re-enforced. There was brass strapping around the corners and banding across several points, a cradle of metal-work to support the weight inside. Javert lifted the lid off the tank, inspected the insides and then moved off.

Boxes and bags were unpacked and their contents laid out neatly on the ground. Occasionally, Javert would refer to a pamphlet he had tucked into his pocket.

Valjean watched, horrified and enthralled, as what he recognised as gears and pistons and levers were slowly assembled into some kind of machine. Dials and gauges were being fitted to the tank as the whole terrible thing began to take its final form.

Javert then opened one of the other boxes and pulled out some packing straw. He brought out a huge glass jar, stoppered with a rubber bung. He pulled out the bung and poured the liquid into the tank. It filled about one eighth of the volume and it immediately began to fizz. Valjean could see tiny streams of bubbles trailing upwards from the plates. More jars were opened and more liquid poured in, until the plates were submerged in the now-seething fluid.

“Fetch me a bowl of water,” Javert ordered.

Shocked at the sudden command, Valjean scrambled to gather one of his bowls and he dipped it in the water bucket. Holding it carefully so as not to spill any, he shuffled towards Javert on his knees. He held the bowl up to Javert, expecting him to take it and drink, having become thirsty from his construction of the machine.

However Javert did not take the bowl. 

He reached into the small pocket of his waistcoat and brought out a folded piece of paper. He opened it over the bowl and a white powder fell onto the surface of the water. Valjean now understood. He watched as Javert stirred the powder in with one gloved finger.

“Drink it,” he said and Valjean did as he was told.

Foul-tasting enough to make him wince, Valjean swallowed down the sleeping draught, even forcing down the bitter, gritty residue at the bottom of the bowl.

“Lie down here,” said Javert, a slim smile on his lips.

Valjean set the bowl down and lay on the floor. He could feel the drug beginning to sweep away his worries and smooth over his distress as it warmed his body and soothed his mind. Deep, sweet dreams beckoned and Valjean fled towards them, knowing that when he awoke, some strange new terror would await him.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters will be posted today, 19 & 20.

The man in the Paris sex shop had been rather polite and helpful.

It had taken Javert an age to pluck up the courage to go in. It was bizarre. He had raided many similar and far more dubious establishments in his time and it had never especially bothered him. Now, he supposed, entering as a customer was a somewhat different prospect.

At least this place wasn’t a front for a bordello; it actually seemed a fairly respectable place, considering what was on sale. The fact that he recognised half of the equipment as police- or prison-issue did raise an eyebrow. He knew that the state often sold off its surpluses, so he supposed it should not come as a complete surprise that they might find their way into such a place.

Javert had something very specific in mind. He had given the old fellow at the counter an entirely fictitious account of having to satisfy both a wife and a mistress as to why he wanted what he wanted. The man had commiserated with his plight and had then led him to an ornate cabinet which had many long drawers set into its base.

“Now, for your insatiable lady-friend, may I offer these?”

The drawer opened and on red velvet, an array of superbly rendered artificial phalluses rested.

“They are all hard-wood from the tropics. Very durable.”

Javert’s eye was drawn to a glassy-looking black version. Highly polished, it was thick and long and ridged, and there was some kind of coating over the wood.

“Is this ceramic?” Javert asked, his fingers trailing over the surface. It was smooth and cold and quite possibly perfect.

“A core of mahogany within a sensual sleeve of pure porcelain.”

Javert licked his lips. He lifted the phallus out of its niche and examined the base. It was exactly as he had hoped. The ceramic sleeve ended there, the mahogany core visible as a reddish disc within a black rim.

“How much?” Javert asked, though the price was an irrelevance.

“Monsieur has excellent taste. That is our premium model and is 19 francs.”

Javert nodded. He would have bought it if it had been 119 francs quite honestly. The construction, the length, the curve of it, how it looked, how it felt. If he had designed it himself it could not have been more perfect.

He left that shop with it nestled into a neat box and tucked under his arm. He held onto it tightly and made his way directly back to his lodgings. He locked the door behind him and then unwrapped his purchase. It shone in the light from the window, sleek and black and carnal. Javert shivered, anticipation shuddering over his skin.

***

When he was sure Valjean was unconscious, Javert removed his shackles and unlocked his ankle. Then he unbuttoned and removed the tattered trousers and put them to one side.

He was gratified to see Valjean’s cock remained tethered and trussed to his balls. The temptation to remove it must have been enormous, but Javert could tell it had not been tampered with – his intricate plait was intact.

Javert retrieved that long length of rope and bound Valjean’s hands together. Thrice around and then Javert brought the rope up between his wrists and tied it off securely. Once Valjean was awake, the long remainder of the rope would again be threaded through the eye-bolt above them.

Javert fetched the wooden pole. He had drilled holes through the ends and a thick length of sash cord had been threaded through each. He kicked Valjean’s legs apart, laid the stake between his feet and then tied his ankles to the pole, hobbling him completely.

Unconscious, his legs spread wide, his hands bound, his cock tethered, Valjean was a wonderful sight. 

Javert knelt next to his naked prisoner, one of his gloved hands running over that firm, hard body. He pushed his fingers into his mouth, forcing it open. Through the leather, Javert could just feel the heat of his mouth, the soft, yielding texture of his tongue and the scuff of his teeth. Javert had the globe in his other hand and he pushed it now into Valjean’s mouth, making him moan in his slumber. Javert had prepared a wide, dark strip of fabric and he tied it over Valjean’s lips, gagging the sphere of glass deeply into his mouth. He knotted it tightly at the base of Valjean’s skull and his prisoner was now prepared.

***

Javert had brought over the chair from the junk pile and had been sitting watching Valjean slowly come around from the sleeping draught.

His groggy confusion and the muffled sounds from his mouth were a delight.

“On your knees,” Javert ordered and then watched him struggle into position with his feet bound to that pole. He managed it, with a strange kind of grace Javert thought.

His wide, wary eyes were the only way he could now communicate and Javert could see he was afraid. This was good. Very, very good.

Hands bound tightly in front of him, Valjean eyed the long trail of rope coiled on the floor. Javert picked it up, stepped onto the chair and threaded it through the eye-bolt. Stepping down, Javert started hauling Valjean’s arms above his head.

“Come on, on your feet,” Javert said, pulling harder on the rope to bring him off his knees.

Valjean shuffled and struggled and got his feet underneath him. Javert could now pull him taut and he did so, relishing the strain he could see this put on Valjean’s body. He tied off the rope and left his captive hanging by his wrists, his legs spread wide, his mouth cruelly gagged.

Javert went to fetch the miniature epée. That incongruous weapon from that dreadful statue had been the sole reason for his purchase. Only a slight modification had been required for it to be fitted to Javert's purpose.

When the statue had been delivered, Javert had immediately taken a candle to the hand of the knight. The epée he held was poorly soldered and it was quickly loosened and removed. The knight and its steed were then discarded. This was what Javert had wanted. Next he needed to remove the guard and again, this was quickly done. Javert simply turned the curved cup of the guard round the other way, placed it back onto the hilt and re-used the melted solder to fix it back together.

Javert now removed the modified epée from a small pouch inside one of the bags. It had some little weight to it, though he could hold it comfortably between his thumb and forefinger. It did look strange, this miniature weapon, out of all proportion with his hand. It was not quite eight inches long, two of which formed the hilt, the rest forming the blade. The guard now curved upwards, towards the rounded tip, which he supposed was about the diameter of the shaft of a quill; narrow, but not insubstantial.

Javert approached Valjean with the implement. His captive’s confusion and complete lack of comprehension were quite wonderful to behold. His eyes were pleading, his mouth was working at the gag, and his body was rigid with tension.

Javert took hold of Valjean’s cock and presented the blunt tip of the epée to his slit. The sound Valjean made, a muffled cry of anguish, only grew as Javert began to force the epée deeper into Valjean’s cock. He writhed on the ropes, his eyes shocked wide, as he tried to pull away. Javert stamped his foot on the pole that bound Valjean’s ankles, preventing any further struggles.

There was resistance inside; Javert could feel it as he pushed the narrow shaft deeper. He could also feel Valjean shuddering in pain, this violation almost incomprehensible to him. With the blade of the epée now almost completely inserted, Javert pulled back Valjean’s foreskin and settled the curved dome of the guard snugly over his glans. Valjean gave a choked gasp at that, the cold metal cupping the hot tip of his cock. Javert released his foreskin and it slid back over the metal, tightly sealing over the dome of metal.

Javert had brought some of that silken thread with him. He knotted it around the hilt, all that now protruded from the end of Valjean’s cock. He made sure the epée was secure inside him and then he bound it tightly to his balls.

Valjean was moaning around the gag, twisting in his bonds, jerking on the ropes, a jagged, desperate look in his eyes. Watching his chest heave, watching his body writhe, seeing all that power and strength rendered utterly helpless was making Javert sweat.

Everything was now in place and the experiment could at last begin.


	21. Chapter 21

The rod that Javert had forced into his cock was all that Valjean could think of. The shock of it, the pain of it, the _wrongness_ of it, filled his mind with a haze of fear.

It had straightened his shaft painfully, dragging it tight against the strong threads that bound it to his balls. It burned deep inside, that stiff, cold metal only slowly warming to his body’s tormented heat.

He moaned around the gag, his head rolling back. He was still groggy from the sleeping draught and his head was full of pain and apprehension.

His arms ached already, hanging from the beam above his head. This was all just preparation, it was pre-amble, but to what he didn’t know.

Javert had total control. He had taken his body and possessed him with a ruthless will. Valjean stood there, immobilised, his legs spread apart and his convict’s mouth muted. His cock throbbed, straining against the threads that held him on the outside and the metal that had been forced inside.

Javert had pulled on thick blacksmith’s gauntlets and picked up a long metal rod. One end was attached to the fizzing tank of fluid, at the other there was a brass ball welded the end. It was this that Javert brought near to Valjean, holding it close to the tip of his cock. Close to that protrusion of metal that lay outside of his shaft.

Valjean heard or felt or saw a snap of light and pain. A scream was torn from his throat and his body jolted violently. A wracking, twisting agony had bolted up through his cock and ripped through his whole body.

He collapsed, shuddering all over, held up only by the ropes around his wrists. His body and mind could not comprehend what had just happened. He sagged forward, all strength ripped out of him, his muscles quivering, his mind reeling.

Javert had stepped back and from his dazed, pain-riddled haze, Valjean could see his jailer smile.

He tried to shuffle back, away from the brass sphere that somehow had made lightening. He made a sound, pleading with Javert to not touch that thing to him again. The glass in his mouth made a mockery of his words. Javert just widened his smile and brought the brass rod close again.

The searing bolt of agony tore up through his cock, rending him from the inside out. It felt like every muscle was being torn from his body and his limbs twisted as he writhed on the ropes.

As swiftly as it was delivered, it dissipated, leaving Valjean hanging helpless from his restraints, panting around his gag. The glass clicked against his teeth as he tried to beg Javert, ‘No more.’ 

He was a doll, a puppet, strung up and made to dance at the whim of this man-made lightening. Javert, enraptured by his toys, tortured Valjean until the box no longer worked.

The shocks had begun to diminish in severity. Valjean was dimly aware that whatever alchemy had been captured in the tank was now nearly used up. He hung limply from the ropes, his strength stolen from him by the relentless use of that device. His breath was ragged, dragged into his lungs over and around the sphere of glass that stopped up his mouth. He could hardly move, he could hardly think. His body and his mind rang with so much pain, he thought he might go mad. It was beyond endurance, it was beyond his imaginings, what he had suffered.

He lifted his head, his eyes half-lidded and struggling to focus. Javert was moving closer and Valjean’s soul trembled at his approach.

Javert’s cock was as hard as stone and he was aching to have it relieved. He had unwittingly drained the device, compelled by its astonishing affect on Valjean to repeatedly punish his vulnerable flesh.

His captive, bound and brutalised, hung from the ropes, exhausted by the torment Javert had inflicted. His naked body, taut and helpless, was now proving hard to resist. His arms raised to the heavens and sagging almost to his knees, he looked like he was in supplication, begging for a mercy that Javert knew would never come. His skin was sweat-streaked and smeared with grime; he looked and smelled like the bagne convict he was. Javert’s cock throbbed.

He found that his hands were on Valjean, his fingers raking over his skin, clawing over his ribs and groping down his torso. Javert ran his hands all over Valjean’s body, over his chest and abdomen, over his tormented cock and aching balls, squeezing and grasping, smearing sweat and oil over his muscular body. He forced his fingers, slick with that oil, between his buttocks and pushed inside, forcing two fingers into Valjean. His captive moaned and then gasped as Javert slid deeper and then deeper still, preparing the way.

His other hand was on Valjean’s tethered, rodded cock, squeezing and pulling and Javert pressed himself close, his cock thick and hard against Valjean’s thigh.

Scraping his hand down Valjean’s sweat-drenched back, Javert freed his erection. Using that slick of sweat and a trace of oil, Javert lubricated his cock, eased apart those tight, hard arse cheeks and pushed the dripping head of his cock against the closed tightness of Valjean’s hole, a tease, a promise of what was to come. His prisoner jerked in shock and tried to pull away, but it was a useless, empty gesture.

Javert grabbed Valjean’s waist and he pushed his way in, Valjean so tense and tight around his tip. Javert shuddered, urgently trying to force himself inside. 

When Javert entered him, he cried out. It was a weak, helpless sound of desperate distress and sinful longing. His captive’s weakened attempts at pleading through his gag only added to Javert’s gratification. His own desire was stoked by its pitiful nature, the song of it drawing him closer, dragging him deeper.

The heat of Valjean’s helpless body closed around Javert’s cock as he rolled his hips against the curve of that hard, perfect arse. Entirely inside him now, Javert’s cock was clenched inside Valjean’s distress, his every cry, his every weakened attempt to struggle free fuelling this wanton thing that had been unleashed after so many long, empty years. His hands closed around Valjean’s hips as he began to fuck him harder.

Drawing back to thrust into him again, Javert found himself bathed by sensations he had only dreamed might be possible. He revelled in the physical pleasures that shivered and sparked through his body, he delighted in the control, the power, the punishments and the domination he was now able to wield. He was wholly seduced by Valjean, whose powerful body and whose sullen spirit he had taken, broken and possessed.

Grinding up and into this vessel that was now his and his alone, Javert hit into that bundle of nerves and Valjean cried out in agonised pleasure. His cock, hopelessly constricted and skewered on that metal shaft, twitched in Javert’s hand. From the sounds that he was forcing from Valjean, he imagined the pain and the distress were immense. It made him rock harder, faster, deeper into his prisoner’s yielding body. He wanted Valjean moaning for release, he wanted him begging and Javert now knew where that pleasure centre lay. Deep inside Valjean, he hit it over and over, his body thrusting, finding its own relentless rhythm.

To have Valjean writhing helplessly on his cock, tortured, tormented, yet brought to the agonised brink of pleasure was going to make Javert come. He was fucking him harder, all control gone as the ecstasy overwhelmed him. His body shuddered and he threw back his head as he spilled his seed into Valjean, filling him, marking him, owning him.

Javert withdrew, breathing hard as his cock softened. He stood back, watching Valjean’s body tremble on the ropes, the gag stifling his cries, the silken strands still binding his straining cock. As Javert watched, a single drop of fluid gathered at the head, ran along the hilt of the epée and for a second hung there, before falling to the floor. The pressure inside his cock and balls must be horrific. Javert smiled.

He cleaned himself, feeling languid yet energised and took up his prized purchase.

He oiled the phallus in front of Valjean so that he would know what was to come. His eyes grew wide, exhaustion chased from them by the fear of what was to happen. He shook his head, moaning, trying to speak, trying to beg, the gag clattering against his teeth.

Javert pushed the phallus up into Valjean in one swift movement. His prisoner screamed, twisting on the ropes, trying to pull away. Long, hard, cold and thick, Javert drew the phallus in and out, in and out, making Valjean arch in pleasure when he ground it against his sweet spot and moan in pain when he forced it deeper, deeper until he was impaled on the whole unyielding length. The narrow stem at the base meant Valjean had closed tight around it, clenching shut, but to ensure it remained in place, Javert brought over the harness. 

A kind of chastity belt in reverse, he fastened the leather strap firstly around Valjean hips. At the back, in the centre, a thick strip hung down. About half-way along the strip spilt in two, so that when passed between his legs, it could be buckled into the belt, either side of his cock. Javert did this now, he forced the thick strap between Valjean’s buttocks and then drew the two straps up between his legs. Pulling them tight over his balls until he moaned, Javert secured them firmly into belt. 

The phallus was now trapped inside Valjean, his arse cheeks bisected by that thick leather belt, the twin straps adding pressure to his balls whilst his cock remained constricted and obstructed.

Javert settled down and watched him fuck himself for hours, unable to come. Valjean was exhausted and he would hang motionless for a time before he would begin to grind his hips once more, unable to resist the pressure that filled him, unable to resist the need, the desperate need, to have those ridges grind against traitorous nerves. His reddened, swollen cock was drooling, dripping agonising drops of fluid from the hilt of the epée.

He would lift his head occasionally and his wide, dark eyes, brimming with pain and begging for mercy, would meet Javert’s. They would stare into each others’ eyes until the effort became to much. Valjean’s head would fall forward, his body would clench around the ceramic cock and the cycle would start over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long hiatus - life and stuff getting in the way.


	22. Chapter 22

Javert’s torments fell into a routine. A sermon often accompanied the shocks from the lightning box. It was as if Javert had somehow managed to contain a fragment of God’s wrath within it, allowing him to dispense His justice on Valjean’s sinful flesh.

It was a pain that flashed and burned and wrenched, dragging screams from his throat that he was unable to prevent. He would watch the gauge on the box in wide-eyed desperation, the long needle edging lower with every shock, until there was no more left and then Javert would come to him.

If the shocks were punishment for his weakness and a judgement on his lustful body, Javert’s attentions were a test. This was not a place for pleasure, at least not his, but the sensation of Javert’s hands upon on him, of Javert _inside_ him, called forth a helpless need. It stirred an ache that was not only between his legs but deep within his chest. The ache of his unspilled seed paled against that which was in his heart. Javert’s touch, rough and callous, greedy and controlling, made Valjean flush with want. Those hard, cruel hands ranging over his naked body made him shudder, not with fear but with desire. The pain of Javert inside him blurred into pleasure. He would open himself and Javert would thrust harder and harder until there was nothing in the world but Javert’s hands, Javert’s cock and Valjean’s own shuddering, unreleased need.

And when he was gone from inside him, replaced by that cold, hard shaft of ceramic, Valjean would try, he would try so hard, not to think of it as Javert. He would try not to buck his hips, he would try not to close tight around it, to not urge it deeper and deeper still, until it was rasping against _that place_. The one that made his body arch and his balls clench and his cock pull hard against those threads. The one that made him moan against the gag and yearn for release, the one that made him twist on the ropes and buck his hips harder, the one that made him want to beg, the one that made him want Javert’s hand, Javert’s _mouth_ , on his cock. As it went on and on and on, Valjean was sure of only one thing, that this would be his undoing. That this unrelenting, agonised pleasuring was going to _un_ make him. 

When Javert let him down, allowing him to sink, exhausted, to his knees, Valjean wanted to grasp onto Javert, to hold him close. His arms were useless after hours bound above his head and instead he would fall against his captor, needing Javert’s strength to prevent him from collapsing to the floor. And Javert would let him. He let him lean on him, he let him rest upon him, until he saw fit to untie his legs, take the gag from his mouth and finally, remove the rod and the phallus from inside him.

When Javert removed the rod, a spray of pre-release and a hot stream of urine splashed onto the flagstones.

“You will learn to control yourself,” said Javert, dissatisfied but evidently not surprised that after days of training, he was still not yet able to curb his urges.

Valjean had no strength with which to nod, he was close to passing out after hours of torture and tormenting pleasure.

“The box will be recharged by morning and you will learn. If I release these,” Javert said, his fingers caressing down the threads which bound Valjean’s cock, “will you get hard?”

He could only moan in reply, his mind and body ravaged by Javert’s punishments. He felt himself lowered to the floor and Javert’s fingers began to untie those hated threads. They had cut into him and constricted him to the point of madness and the flood of sensations as he was freed made Valjean want to weep. He was limp in Javert’s hand, the throbbing now one of total pain and zero pleasure. It was the thud of an injury filling with blood, it was the ache of distress, it was the realisation that the pain till now had been almost wholly numbed and now it roared forth unbidden and unbound. 

Valjean groaned and rolled away, his hands, still tied with rope, clasped between his legs. He was on fire and unlike the spear-like jolt from the lightning box, this was thick and deep and roiling. As blood thudded back into him, every nerve in his aching length began to scream at him. His balls thundered, desperate and heavy, and he ached for a release he knew he could not risk. His cock was a burning agony that nonetheless cried out for the attention of his own hand. But Javert… Javert would be displeased if he should dare to touch himself like that.

His lustful reactions were now experiencing the full effects of Javert’s punishments, the burning inside his cock from the rod and the shocks, the searing pain from the removal of the constricting threads, the pounding ache in his throbbing balls. From all these things the impossibility of release was being driven into Valjean’s body and his mind. Held on that brink for hours, day after day, the pain had burned into a pleasure that he knew could never be released.

Javert had re-shackled his ankle and then pulled his hands away from his groin. He untied his wrists and then left him, climbing the ladder and closing up the trapdoor.

Valjean lay in the darkness, clutching onto himself, mired in a blaze of pain and misery brought about by his own weakness, his own sinfulness and his own lust.

He began to pray and it was a jumbled, incoherent un-spooling of words and sounds and thoughts. He felt un-tethered, not only physically, but as though something had come loose inside his head which was now spilling out of his mouth. A torrent of self-pity and fear and hopelessness washed through him as the wrongness of his yearning for Javert’s touch overwhelmed him.

Valjean crawled into his corner and his unworthy, filthy soul cowered in the shadows with him.


	23. Chapter 23

Those several intense days spent with his prisoner and the disciplinary device had put a spring in Javert’s step. He needed to restock their supplies, run a few errands and see if he could check in with one of his police spies. It would be a novelty to have them report on his dandy of a replacement, but he was to return to duty shortly and forewarned was always forearmed.

On this crisp October day, under a clear, cold sky, the town seemed louder and more raucous than he remembered. He shoved his way through the heaving throngs as the market vendors bellowed about their various wares.

Javert’s eye was about the crowd, looking for any misdemeanour or crime. If he could pull someone in, he would have a legitimate reason to visit the police station. Sadly, no one presented themselves for arrest and so he made firstly for his own lodgings, for a much needed change of clothes and to pick up some money and the first of those letters.

As he unlocked the drawer, a thrill ran through him. This letter, so elegantly address to M. Robert in the convict’s own hand, was a critical part of the plan. Robert’s good nature had been blinded to the travesty that had unfolded when Madeleine was made mayor. These letters were needed to blind him further, to silence the fears Pere Madeleine’s sudden ‘abandonment’ of his life in Montreuil had aroused. 

Javert then found one of his spies in the tavern and they ate an early lunch. Rougerie confirmed all that Javert had suspected; Castange was a thin-skinned idiot who cared more about the appearance of success than actually working to achieve it. His reports had put a gloss on results which would not stand up to scrutiny. Javert had been working hard to instil some sense of duty and pride into his workforce and now this craven fool was undoing it all. Javert, with great effort, held down his boiling distain. He would not let a preening cock like Castange ruin his otherwise wonderful mood.

He nodded to Rougerie that their meeting was over and Javert left. He was certain that Castange would not allow him to use one of the police horses and so he made his way to the stables at the edge of town. A decent animal could be hired for a few days and now Javert had access to a torrent of money, that extravagant expense on a good animal was no longer anything of the sort.

The day was warming and the sun on his back was welcome and pleasant, having spent so many days in that stone-cold cellar. His mount was a sturdy grey and she was keeping to a decent pace without much need for Javert’s intervention.

The countryside sped by. The fields were now all tilled to brown earth, the gold and the glow of harvest-time was weeks’ passed now. The world would start to slow soon, as the nights drew in, and Javert had preparations to make.

Arras was a large, busy town and though he was somewhat known, he hoped not so well after what was a fairly short time in the area.

He gave in the letter to the postmaster and paid the fee. Again, that thrill shivered through him and he found himself eager to hear of Robert’s reaction to the contents. The next time the man approached him, Javert would not feel his usual irritation. He smiled as he left the office, one more errand ticked off his list.

The next task was one he felt the strangest excitement over. He could not quite place it and did not fully understand it, but on this most excellent of days he was not going to interrogate his feelings as if they were some common thief.

The clothing store was one he had seen on a past visit, but had not had the funds available to even consider entering. As that was no longer a concern, Javert had felt drawn to this establishment and its sense of respectability and discretion.

On entering, he felt embraced by the warm tones of the wood, the soft, fine clothing on display and the quiet, respectful manner of the owner.

“Good afternoon, my good sir. How may I be of assistance?”

“There is a new staff member that requires decent, warm clothing.”

“Will there be a need for outdoor working?”

Javert paused. Most certainly not, however the cold from the oncoming winter would penetrate the cell most brutally.

“There will, so a requirement for undershirts, shirts, jerkins and woollens is desirable.”

The man showed Javert to a neat pile of shirts.

“These are a thick cotton mix and have a fine finish. If he is doing manual work, though, these may be a little too fine.”

“The owner of the establishment is keen to have his understaff well presented.”

The jerkins Javert was shown next were plush and soft. He trailed his fingers over the cloth. With his dark eyes and now pale skin, the soft greens and golds would become Valjean well and Javert could imagine running his hand over the fine material with Valjean’s hard, firm body shuddering beneath his touch.

He needed warm clothing, but these finer choices were not for Valjean’s benefit. Javert had thought dressing him in rags and then having him grovel naked would be appropriate, but he had found that the novelty of this had quickly worn off. He had him. His body, his mind and his soul were now Javert’s. He could now mould him into anything that pleased him.

And he found that the thought of dressing him, now that _was_ a pleasing thing. Valjean would be grateful and he would be confused. He would also then have something to lose, soft, warm clothes as the autumn chill turned to winter cold.

Javert would also savour commanding him to strip. The deep yearning he had to watch Valjean reveal his body had been laid so long ago. A recurring dream, it had many forms. Valjean forced to strip and then be searched, his humiliation feeding Javert’s desire. Valjean forced to strip and then be shackled and whipped, the punishments inflicted on his broad, muscular back firing across Javert’s mind. Valjean forced to strip and then bent over the desk in the prison hulks, or in the police station, or in Madeleine’s office. The slow, sullen way Valjean removed his clothes would be erased and it would be replaced by a downcast, devoted need to please.

The warm, soft clothes to cover and then reveal Valjean’s shame were purchased and Javert left with the packages.

He lodged that evening in Arras and dined well, a good day having topped an excellent week.


	24. Chapter 24

Valjean did not understand. After the impossible brutality of the machine that Javert had assembled, after Javert had taken him for the first time, after the misery of a shaft strapped inside him for hours, Valjean did not understand this sudden kindness.

Javert had brought him clothes. Warm, soft, thick clothes and had watched him with a keen, hungry eye as he had tentatively dressed himself. To allow him to put on the thick cotton twill trousers, Javert had just thrown him the key to the ankle shackle. Valjean caught it and froze. He did not know whether this was a trick. Javert was armed, but the pistol was tucked into his waistband and his hands were relaxed to his side.

“Finish dressing,” Javert encouraged. “If you try anything, know that I will shoot you in the kneecap.”

When Valjean set the key at the lock, it chattered, iron against iron, until he was able to slot it home. He gave Javert a last, uncertain glance and turned the key. Javert’s hand was now resting on the polished wood of the pistol’s handle, his eyes dancing in the half-light.

Valjean pulled away the chain. The skin around his ankle was scuffed and raw and the relief to have the shackle removed, even for a short time meant Valjean was swept with gratitude. Thick woollen socks and soft leather shoes meant he felt more comfortable and warm than he had in ages.

“Can’t have you freezing to death, now can we?”

Valjean shook his head.

“Lock yourself back up,” Javert ordered, “then throw me back the keys.”

It was less harsh, to have the cold metal fastened over soft wool and as Valjean closed the band around his ankle, he again felt gratitude for this kindness Javert was showing him.

He threw the keys back to Javert, who snatched them out of the air and smiled.

His next gift was a blanket and a bed-roll, pushed into the room so that he would be able to retrieve them. As he came forward to do so, Javert also stepped forward, making Valjean halt his progress, half-crawling, half-cowering in the middle of the floor.

Javert smiled. “You can take them.”

Valjean curled his fingers into the blanket and the bed-roll and took them back into his corner.

“Come out here,” Javert ordered and Valjean complied, crawling out to kneel in front of his captor. “Give me your hands.”

Valjean lifted his hands to Javert, who took them in his own. Hard, rough, warm hands pressed Valjean’s together, wrist to wrist and then tied them tightly together with a short length of rope.

“I want you to show me how grateful you are.”

Valjean swallowed. Although warm clothes now covered his body, Javert was looking at him as though he were still naked, a hunger in his eyes. The chill that had penetrated Valjean’s bones began to be replaced by a heat that began deep inside his chest. It radiated out in dizzying waves because Valjean could see what it was Javert wanted from him.

Directly in his eye line, Javert had begun to stir, swelling the fabric to such an extent that Valjean could not take his eyes off what was growing in front of him.

He raised his bound, shaking hands and touched the top of Javert’s trousers, a tentative brush of just fingertips on fabric. Valjean looked up at Javert’s eyes. They were hooded and they shone with desire. A slow, lascivious smile settled onto Javert’s face and he gave a nod that Valjean should continue.

He fumbled the first button, fingers shaking. Javert removed the pistol from the waistband and Valjean froze again. Javert’s smile stretched further, showing teeth.

“I’ll tell you when to stop.”

Valjean lowered his eyes and slipped the next button free. When he freed the next, he could feel the heat of Javert’s skin against his fingers, the shirt-tail covering his hardening length. He pushed the shirt up, revealing Javert to him.

His own cock twitched as his fingers touched Javert. The skin was velvet soft and as he trailed his fingertips down the shaft, he felt Javert shudder. He took a firmer hold, twisting his hands inside the ropes to allow him to close around it fully. He could now feel the solid core inside the soft skin and his own arousal was growing. The heat of it was wrong. The way it ached between his legs and the way it ached inside him. The tethers had been removed and Valjean knew he should not be responding but it was beyond him. Beyond his control and beyond his understanding.

Javert pushed the fingers of his left hand into Valjean’s hair and pulled him closer.

“I want your mouth to show me how grateful you are.”

This would be his first time and Valjean had some idea what Javert wanted. He knew from the close confines of the bagne what those desperate, lust-filled men had done to each other, but this had never been done or asked of him before.

Valjean didn’t know and Javert was not telling him. He had thought, seeing fellow convicts, that he would never be able to commit such an act. He had fought and bested the few who had tried to force him. But now he was the bested one, he was the one who was now compelled by circumstance and the strange, dark heat in his own soul. He moved his head until the tip of Javert’s cock brushed his lips. A deep sigh from Javert and so Valjean opened his mouth and took the crown of Javert’s penis fully into his mouth. He moved his lips up and down that topmost part, his hand working the base. He felt Javert’s grip tighten in his hair and pull him down further. Valjean opened his lips, slicked with saliva, and then sealed them tight, dragging his tongue from the base to the tip as he loosed his grip on Javert’s shaft.

The shock of it, when Javert began to seep into his mouth, made him gasp and swallow. His throat closed over the tip of Javert’s cock and that made Javert moan loudly. His own part-hard erection grew harder at that sound, something in its undone abandon was so unlike Javert that Valjean ached to make him make that sound again.

He began to dip lower, taking more and more of Javert deeper and deeper, closing his mouth and lips and curling his tongue, rasping it up and down and around, sweeping across the dribbling tip over and over until it had Javert begin to buck into Valjean’s mouth. He opened his mouth wider, trying to let Javert have as much of him as he desired. After several deep, slow thrusts, he had pulled back and so Valjean dipped his head and he rolled his tongue around the thickness of him and then dragged upward, slowly. He felt Javert shudder and that long, low moan escaped him once again.

Javert’s hands gripped Valjean’s head, strong fingers digging into his scalp and Valjean knew he would not be far off now. His thrusting became more aggressive, more uncontrolled and Valjean found it quite impossible. Javert was now driving into the back of Valjean’s throat and it was a terrible struggle to keep from gagging on the hard, wet cock that filled his mouth.

Javert came with a cry of pleasure and Valjean’s throat was sprayed with the salt tang of his release. Choking it down, desperate to please and to take all that Javert was giving, Valjean swallowed again and again.

When Javert finally withdrew, a trace of semen mixed with saliva trailed onto Valjean’s lips. Javert stepped back, tucked himself away and placed the pistol back in his waistband.

He ran his hand over Valjean’s face, trailing his thumb over Valjean’s open, reddened lips, wiping his own issue from them. He gripped Valjean’s jaw, tipping his head back so that he could look into his eyes. Valjean met them, knowing shame and pride were at war in his own. A look of fierce relaxation was on Javert’s face.

“You’ve done that before,” he said, his voice a low, pleasure-filled purr.

Valjean did not dare contradict him and so he did nothing.

“But this,” said Javert, running the tip of his boot into Valjean’s half-hard cock. “This is not acceptable. It will be dealt with. Do you understand?”

Valjean nodded, knowing that this failure to keep himself in check would have consequences despite the pleasure he had wrung from Javert. When Javert let go of him, he let his head drop. He knelt in front of Javert, the taste of him heavy on his tongue, and awaited his punishment.


End file.
